Contents

About
................................................................................................................................................
1
Chapter 1: Getting started with Python Language
...................................................................................... 2
Section 1.1: Getting Started
...........................................................................................................................................
2
Section 1.2: Creating variables and assigning values
................................................................................................ 6
Section 1.3: Block Indentation
.....................................................................................................................................
10
Section 1.4: Datatypes
................................................................................................................................................
11
Section 1.5: Collection Types
......................................................................................................................................
15
Section 1.6: IDLE - Python GUI
....................................................................................................................................
19
Section 1.7: User Input
................................................................................................................................................
21
Section 1.8: Built in Modules and Functions
.............................................................................................................. 21
Section 1.9: Creating a module
...................................................................................................................................
25
Section 1.10: Installation of Python 2.7.x and 3.x
....................................................................................................... 26
Section 1.11: String function - str() and repr()
........................................................................................................... 28
Section 1.12: Installing external modules using pip
................................................................................................... 29
Section 1.13: Help Utility
...............................................................................................................................................
31
Chapter 2: Python Data Types
............................................................................................................................
33
Section 2.1: String Data Type
.....................................................................................................................................
33
Section 2.2: Set Data Types
.......................................................................................................................................
33
Section 2.3: Numbers data type
................................................................................................................................
33
Section 2.4: List Data Type
.........................................................................................................................................
34
Section 2.5: Dictionary Data Type
.............................................................................................................................
34
Section 2.6: Tuple Data Type
.....................................................................................................................................
34
Chapter 3: Indentation
.............................................................................................................................................
35
Section 3.1: Simple example
.......................................................................................................................................
35
Section 3.2: How Indentation is Parsed
..................................................................................................................... 35
Section 3.3: Indentation Errors
...................................................................................................................................
36
Chapter 4: Comments and Documentation
.................................................................................................. 37
Section 4.1: Single line, inline and multiline comments
............................................................................................ 37
Section 4.2: Programmatically accessing docstrings
.............................................................................................. 37
Section 4.3: Write documentation using docstrings
................................................................................................ 38
Chapter 5: Date and Time
......................................................................................................................................
42
Section 5.1: Parsing a string into a timezone aware datetime object
.................................................................... 42
Section 5.2: Constructing timezone-aware datetimes
............................................................................................ 42
Section 5.3: Computing time di☐erences
.................................................................................................................. 44
Section 5.4: Basic datetime objects usage
............................................................................................................... 44
Section 5.5: Switching between time zones
.............................................................................................................. 45
Section 5.6: Simple date arithmetic
...........................................................................................................................
45
Section 5.7: Converting timestamp to datetime
...................................................................................................... 46
Section 5.8: Subtracting months from a date accurately
....................................................................................... 46
Section 5.9: Parsing an arbitrary ISO 8601 timestamp with minimal libraries
...................................................... 46
Section 5.10: Get an ISO 8601 timestamp
.................................................................................................................. 47
Section 5.11: Parsing a string with a short time zone name into a timezone
aware datetime object ................ 47
Section 5.12: Fuzzy datetime parsing (extracting datetime out of a text)
............................................................ 48
Section 5.13: Iterate over dates
..................................................................................................................................
49
Chapter 6: Date Formatting
..................................................................................................................................
50
Section 6.1: Time between two date-times
............................................................................................................... 50
Section 6.2: Outputting datetime object to string
.................................................................................................... 50
Section 6.3: Parsing string to datetime object
......................................................................................................... 50
Chapter 7: Enum
.................................................................................................................................................
51
Section 7.1: Creating an enum (Python 2.4 through 3.3)
......................................................................................... 51
Section 7.2: Iteration
.................................................................................................................................................
51
Chapter 8: Set
.................................................................................................................................................
52
Section 8.1: Operations on sets
..................................................................................................................................
52
Section 8.2: Get the unique elements of a list
.......................................................................................................... 53
Section 8.3: Set of Sets
................................................................................................................................................
53
Section 8.4: Set Operations using Methods and Builtins
......................................................................................... 53
Section 8.5: Sets versus multisets
..............................................................................................................................
55
Chapter 9: Simple Mathematical Operators
................................................................................................. 57
Section 9.1: Division
................................................................................................................................................
57
Section 9.2: Addition
................................................................................................................................................
58
Section 9.3: Exponentiation
........................................................................................................................................
59
Section 9.4: Trigonometric Functions
........................................................................................................................
60
Section 9.5: Inplace Operations
.................................................................................................................................
61
Section 9.6: Subtraction
..............................................................................................................................................
61
Section 9.7: Multiplication
...........................................................................................................................................
61
Section 9.8: Logarithms
..............................................................................................................................................
62
Section 9.9: Modulus
................................................................................................................................................
62
Chapter 10: Bitwise Operators
.............................................................................................................................
65
Section 10.1: Bitwise NOT
............................................................................................................................................
65
Section 10.2: Bitwise XOR (Exclusive OR)
.................................................................................................................. 66
Section 10.3: Bitwise AND
............................................................................................................................................
67
Section 10.4: Bitwise OR
..............................................................................................................................................
67
Section 10.5: Bitwise Left Shift
....................................................................................................................................
67
Section 10.6: Bitwise Right Shift
..................................................................................................................................
68
Section 10.7: Inplace Operations
................................................................................................................................
68
Chapter 11: Boolean Operators
............................................................................................................................
69
Section 11.1: `and` and `or` are not guaranteed to return a boolean
...................................................................... 69
Section 11.2: A simple example
...................................................................................................................................
69
Section 11.3: Short-circuit evaluation
.........................................................................................................................
69
Section 11.4: and
.................................................................................................................................................
70
Section 11.5: or
.................................................................................................................................................
70
Section 11.6: not
.................................................................................................................................................
71
Chapter 12: Operator Precedence
...................................................................................................................... 72
Section 12.1: Simple Operator Precedence Examples in python
............................................................................. 72
Chapter 13: Variable Scope and Binding
......................................................................................................... 73
Section 13.1: Nonlocal Variables
.................................................................................................................................
73
Section 13.2: Global Variables
....................................................................................................................................
73
Section 13.3: Local Variables
......................................................................................................................................
74
Section 13.4: The del command
.................................................................................................................................
75
Section 13.5: Functions skip class scope when looking up names
......................................................................... 76
Section 13.6: Local vs Global Scope
...........................................................................................................................
77
Section 13.7: Binding Occurrence
...............................................................................................................................
79
Chapter 14: Conditionals
.........................................................................................................................................
80
Section 14.1: Conditional Expression (or "The Ternary Operator")
......................................................................... 80
Section 14.2: if, elif, and else
.......................................................................................................................................
80
Section 14.3: Truth Values
...........................................................................................................................................
80
Section 14.4: Boolean Logic Expressions
................................................................................................................... 81
Section 14.5: Using the cmp function to get the comparison result of two
objects ............................................. 83
Section 14.6: Else statement
.......................................................................................................................................
83
Section 14.7: Testing if an object is None and assigning it
...................................................................................... 84
Section 14.8: If statement
............................................................................................................................................
84
Chapter 15: Comparisons
........................................................................................................................................
86
Section 15.1: Chain Comparisons
................................................................................................................................
86
Section 15.2: Comparison by `is` vs `==`
...................................................................................................................... 87
Section 15.3: Greater than or less than
...................................................................................................................... 88
Section 15.4: Not equal to
...........................................................................................................................................
88
Section 15.5: Equal To
.................................................................................................................................................
89
Section 15.6: Comparing Objects
...............................................................................................................................
89
Chapter 16: Loops
.................................................................................................................................................
91
Section 16.1: Break and Continue in Loops
................................................................................................................ 91
Section 16.2: For loops
................................................................................................................................................
93
Section 16.3: Iterating over lists
..................................................................................................................................
93
Section 16.4: Loops with an "else" clause
.................................................................................................................. 94
Section 16.5: The Pass Statement
..............................................................................................................................
96
Section 16.6: Iterating over dictionaries
.................................................................................................................... 97
Section 16.7: The "half loop" do-while
........................................................................................................................
98
Section 16.8: Looping and Unpacking
....................................................................................................................... 98
Section 16.9: Iterating di☐erent portion of a list with di☐erent step size
............................................................... 99
Section 16.10: While Loop
..........................................................................................................................................
100
Chapter 17: Arrays
................................................................................................................................................
102
Section 17.1: Access individual elements through indexes
..................................................................................... 102
Section 17.2: Basic Introduction to Arrays
.............................................................................................................. 102
Section 17.3: Append any value to the array using append() method
................................................................ 103
Section 17.4: Insert value in an array using insert() method
................................................................................ 103
Section 17.5: Extend python array using extend() method
................................................................................... 103
Section 17.6: Add items from list into array using fromlist() method
.................................................................. 104
Section 17.7: Remove any array element using remove() method
..................................................................... 104
Section 17.8: Remove last array element using pop() method
............................................................................ 104
Section 17.9: Fetch any element through its index using index() method
........................................................... 104
Section 17.10: Reverse a python array using reverse() method
........................................................................... 104
Section 17.11: Get array bu☐er information through bu☐er_info() method
........................................................ 105
Section 17.12: Check for number of occurrences of an element using count()
method .................................... 105
Section 17.13: Convert array to string using tostring() method
............................................................................ 105
Section 17.14: Convert array to a python list with same elements using
tolist() method .................................. 105
Section 17.15: Append a string to char array using fromstring() method
........................................................... 105
Chapter 18: Multidimensional arrays
.............................................................................................................. 106
Section 18.1: Lists in lists
............................................................................................................................................
106
Section 18.2: Lists in lists in lists in..
..........................................................................................................................
106
Chapter 19: Dictionary
............................................................................................................................................
108
Section 19.1: Introduction to Dictionary
................................................................................................................... 108
Section 19.2: Avoiding KeyError Exceptions
........................................................................................................... 109
Section 19.3: Iterating Over a Dictionary
................................................................................................................. 109
Section 19.4: Dictionary with default values
........................................................................................................... 110
Section 19.5: Merging dictionaries
...........................................................................................................................
111
Section 19.6: Accessing keys and values
................................................................................................................ 111
Section 19.7: Accessing values of a dictionary
....................................................................................................... 112
Section 19.8: Creating a dictionary
..........................................................................................................................
112
Section 19.9: Creating an ordered dictionary
......................................................................................................... 113
Section 19.10: Unpacking dictionaries using the ** operator
................................................................................. 113
Section 19.11: The trailing comma
............................................................................................................................
114
Section 19.12: The dict() constructor
........................................................................................................................
114
Section 19.13: Dictionaries Example
.........................................................................................................................
114
Section 19.14: All combinations of dictionary values
.............................................................................................. 115
Chapter 20: List
.................................................................................................................................................
117
Section 20.1: List methods and supported operators
............................................................................................ 117
Section 20.2: Accessing list values
..........................................................................................................................
122
Section 20.3: Checking if list is empty
..................................................................................................................... 123
Section 20.4: Iterating over a list
.............................................................................................................................
123
Section 20.5: Checking whether an item is in a list
................................................................................................ 124
Section 20.6: Any and All
..........................................................................................................................................
124
Section 20.7: Reversing list elements
......................................................................................................................
125
Section 20.8: Concatenate and Merge lists
............................................................................................................ 125
Section 20.9: Length of a list
....................................................................................................................................
126
Section 20.10: Remove duplicate values in list
....................................................................................................... 126
Section 20.11: Comparison of lists
............................................................................................................................
127
Section 20.12: Accessing values in nested list
........................................................................................................ 127
Section 20.13: Initializing a List to a Fixed Number of Elements
........................................................................... 128
Chapter 21: List comprehensions
......................................................................................................................
130
Section 21.1: List Comprehensions
...........................................................................................................................
130
Section 21.2: Conditional List Comprehensions
...................................................................................................... 132
Section 21.3: Avoid repetitive and expensive operations using conditional
clause ............................................ 134
Section 21.4: Dictionary Comprehensions
............................................................................................................... 135
Section 21.5: List Comprehensions with Nested Loops
.......................................................................................... 136
Section 21.6: Generator Expressions
........................................................................................................................
138
Section 21.7: Set Comprehensions
...........................................................................................................................
140
Section 21.8: Refactoring filter and map to list comprehensions
......................................................................... 140
Section 21.9: Comprehensions involving tuples
...................................................................................................... 141
Section 21.10: Counting Occurrences Using Comprehension
............................................................................... 142
Section 21.11: Changing Types in a List
.................................................................................................................... 142
Section 21.12: Nested List Comprehensions
............................................................................................................ 142
Section 21.13: Iterate two or more list simultaneously within list
comprehension .............................................. 143
Chapter 22: List slicing (selecting parts of lists)
....................................................................................... 144
Section 22.1: Using the third "step" argument
........................................................................................................ 144
Section 22.2: Selecting a sublist from a list
............................................................................................................ 144
Section 22.3: Reversing a list with slicing
................................................................................................................ 144
Section 22.4: Shifting a list using slicing
.................................................................................................................. 144
Chapter 23: groupby()
............................................................................................................................................
146
Section 23.1: Example 4
.............................................................................................................................................
146
Section 23.2: Example 2
............................................................................................................................................
146
Section 23.3: Example 3
............................................................................................................................................
147
Chapter 24: Linked lists
.........................................................................................................................................
149
Section 24.1: Single linked list example
................................................................................................................... 149
Chapter 25: Linked List Node
.............................................................................................................................
154
Section 25.1: Write a simple Linked List Node in python
....................................................................................... 154
Chapter 26: Filter
.................................................................................................................................................
155
Section 26.1: Basic use of filter
.................................................................................................................................
155
Section 26.2: Filter without function
........................................................................................................................
155
Section 26.3: Filter as short-circuit check
............................................................................................................... 156
Section 26.4: Complementary function: filterfalse, ifilterfalse
.............................................................................. 156
Chapter 27: Heapq
.................................................................................................................................................
158
Section 27.1: Largest and smallest items in a collection
....................................................................................... 158
Section 27.2: Smallest item in a collection
.............................................................................................................. 158
Chapter 28: Tuple
.................................................................................................................................................
160
Section 28.1: Tuple
.................................................................................................................................................
160
Section 28.2: Tuples are immutable
........................................................................................................................
161
Section 28.3: Packing and Unpacking Tuples
........................................................................................................ 161
Section 28.4: Built-in Tuple Functions
..................................................................................................................... 162
Section 28.5: Tuple Are Element-wise Hashable and Equatable
......................................................................... 163
Section 28.6: Indexing Tuples
...................................................................................................................................
164
Section 28.7: Reversing Elements
............................................................................................................................
164
Chapter 29: Basic Input and Output
............................................................................................................... 165
Section 29.1: Using the print function
......................................................................................................................
165
Section 29.2: Input from a File
.................................................................................................................................
165
Section 29.3: Read from stdin
..................................................................................................................................
167
Section 29.4: Using input() and raw_input()
.......................................................................................................... 167
Section 29.5: Function to prompt user for a number
............................................................................................ 167
Section 29.6: Printing a string without a newline at the end
................................................................................. 168
Chapter 30: Files & Folders I/O
.........................................................................................................................
171
Section 30.1: File modes
............................................................................................................................................
171
Section 30.2: Reading a file line-by-line
.................................................................................................................. 172
Section 30.3: Iterate files (recursively)
.................................................................................................................... 173
Section 30.4: Getting the full contents of a file
...................................................................................................... 173
Section 30.5: Writing to a file
...................................................................................................................................
174
Section 30.6: Check whether a file or path exists
.................................................................................................. 175
Section 30.7: Random File Access Using mmap
.................................................................................................... 176
Section 30.8: Replacing text in a file
.......................................................................................................................
176
Section 30.9: Checking if a file is empty
................................................................................................................. 176
Section 30.10: Read a file between a range of lines
.............................................................................................. 177
Section 30.11: Copy a directory tree
........................................................................................................................
177
Section 30.12: Copying contents of one file to a di☐erent file
.............................................................................. 177
Chapter 31: os.path
.................................................................................................................................................
178
Section 31.1: Join Paths
.............................................................................................................................................
178
Section 31.2: Path Component Manipulation
.......................................................................................................... 178
Section 31.3: Get the parent directory
..................................................................................................................... 178
Section 31.4: If the given path exists
........................................................................................................................
178
Section 31.5: check if the given path is a directory, file, symbolic link, mount
point etc .................................... 179
Section 31.6: Absolute Path from Relative Path
..................................................................................................... 179
Chapter 32: Iterables and Iterators
................................................................................................................ 180
Section 32.1: Iterator vs Iterable vs Generator
....................................................................................................... 180
Section 32.2: Extract values one by one
................................................................................................................. 181
Section 32.3: Iterating over entire iterable
............................................................................................................. 181
Section 32.4: Verify only one element in iterable
.................................................................................................. 181
Section 32.5: What can be iterable
..........................................................................................................................
182
Section 32.6: Iterator isn't reentrant!
.......................................................................................................................
182
Chapter 33: Functions
.............................................................................................................................................
183
Section 33.1: Defining and calling simple functions
............................................................................................... 183
Section 33.2: Defining a function with an arbitrary number of arguments
........................................................ 184
Section 33.3: Lambda (Inline/Anonymous) Functions
.......................................................................................... 187
Section 33.4: Defining a function with optional arguments
.................................................................................. 189
Section 33.5: Defining a function with optional mutable arguments
................................................................... 190
Section 33.6: Argument passing and mutability
.................................................................................................... 191
Section 33.7: Returning values from functions
....................................................................................................... 192
Section 33.8: Closure
................................................................................................................................................
192
Section 33.9: Forcing the use of named parameters
............................................................................................ 193
Section 33.10: Nested functions
...............................................................................................................................
194
Section 33.11: Recursion limit
....................................................................................................................................
194
Section 33.12: Recursive Lambda using assigned variable
................................................................................... 195
Section 33.13: Recursive functions
...........................................................................................................................
195
Section 33.14: Defining a function with arguments
................................................................................................ 196
Section 33.15: Iterable and dictionary unpacking
.................................................................................................. 196
Section 33.16: Defining a function with multiple arguments
................................................................................. 198
Chapter 34: Defining functions with list arguments
.............................................................................. 199
Section 34.1: Function and Call
.................................................................................................................................
199
Chapter 35: Functional Programming in Python
...................................................................................... 201
Section 35.1: Lambda Function
................................................................................................................................
201
Section 35.2: Map Function
......................................................................................................................................
201
Section 35.3: Reduce Function
.................................................................................................................................
201
Section 35.4: Filter Function
.....................................................................................................................................
201
Chapter 36: Partial functions
..............................................................................................................................
202
Section 36.1: Raise the power
...................................................................................................................................
202
Chapter 37: Decorators
.........................................................................................................................................
203
Section 37.1: Decorator function
..............................................................................................................................
203
Section 37.2: Decorator class
...................................................................................................................................
204
Section 37.3: Decorator with arguments (decorator factory)
.............................................................................. 205
Section 37.4: Making a decorator look like the decorated function
.................................................................... 207
Section 37.5: Using a decorator to time a function
............................................................................................... 207
Section 37.6: Create singleton class with a decorator
.......................................................................................... 208
Chapter 38: Classes
.................................................................................................................................................
209
Section 38.1: Introduction to classes
........................................................................................................................
209
Section 38.2: Bound, unbound, and static methods
.............................................................................................. 210
Section 38.3: Basic inheritance
................................................................................................................................
212
Section 38.4: Monkey Patching
................................................................................................................................
214
Section 38.5: New-style vs. old-style classes
.......................................................................................................... 214
Section 38.6: Class methods: alternate initializers
................................................................................................. 215
Section 38.7: Multiple Inheritance
............................................................................................................................
217
Section 38.8: Properties
............................................................................................................................................
219
Section 38.9: Default values for instance variables
............................................................................................... 220
Section 38.10: Class and instance variables
........................................................................................................... 221
Section 38.11: Class composition
..............................................................................................................................
222
Section 38.12: Listing All Class Members
................................................................................................................. 223
Section 38.13: Singleton class
...................................................................................................................................
224
Section 38.14: Descriptors and Dotted Lookups
.................................................................................................... 225
Chapter 39: Metaclasses
.......................................................................................................................................
226
Section 39.1: Basic Metaclasses
...............................................................................................................................
226
Section 39.2: Singletons using metaclasses
........................................................................................................... 227
Section 39.3: Using a metaclass
..............................................................................................................................
227
Section 39.4: Introduction to Metaclasses
.............................................................................................................. 227
Section 39.5: Custom functionality with metaclasses
........................................................................................... 228
Section 39.6: The default metaclass
.......................................................................................................................
229
Chapter 40: String Formatting
.........................................................................................................................
232
Section 40.1: Basics of String Formatting
............................................................................................................... 232
Section 40.2: Alignment and padding
..................................................................................................................... 233
Section 40.3: Format literals (f-string)
.................................................................................................................... 234
Section 40.4: Float formatting
.................................................................................................................................
234
Section 40.5: Named placeholders
.........................................................................................................................
235
Section 40.6: String formatting with datetime
....................................................................................................... 236
Section 40.7: Formatting Numerical Values
........................................................................................................... 236
Section 40.8: Nested formatting
..............................................................................................................................
237
Section 40.9: Format using Getitem and Getattr
................................................................................................... 237
Section 40.10: Padding and truncating strings, combined
.................................................................................... 237
Section 40.11: Custom formatting for a class
......................................................................................................... 238
Chapter 41: String Methods
................................................................................................................................
240
Section 41.1: Changing the capitalization of a string
............................................................................................. 240
Section 41.2: str.translate: Translating characters in a string
............................................................................... 241
Section 41.3: str.format and f-strings: Format values into a string
...................................................................... 242
Section 41.4: String module's useful constants
....................................................................................................... 243
Section 41.5: Stripping unwanted leading/trailing characters from a string
...................................................... 244
Section 41.6: Reversing a string
...............................................................................................................................
245
Section 41.7: Split a string based on a delimiter into a list of strings
................................................................... 245
Section 41.8: Replace all occurrences of one substring with another substring
................................................ 246
Section 41.9: Testing what a string is composed of
............................................................................................... 247
Section 41.10: String Contains
...................................................................................................................................
249
Section 41.11: Join a list of strings into one string
................................................................................................... 249
Section 41.12: Counting number of times a substring appears in a string
.......................................................... 250
Section 41.13: Case insensitive string comparisons
................................................................................................ 250
Section 41.14: Justify strings
.....................................................................................................................................
251
Section 41.15: Test the starting and ending characters of a string
...................................................................... 252
Section 41.16: Conversion between str or bytes data and unicode characters
.................................................. 253
Chapter 42: Using loops within functions
.................................................................................................... 255
Section 42.1: Return statement inside loop in a function
...................................................................................... 255
Chapter 43: Importing modules
........................................................................................................................
256
Section 43.1: Importing a module
............................................................................................................................
256
Section 43.2: The __all__ special variable
............................................................................................................ 257
Section 43.3: Import modules from an arbitrary filesystem location
.................................................................. 258
Section 43.4: Importing all names from a module
................................................................................................ 258
Section 43.5: Programmatic importing
................................................................................................................... 259
Section 43.6: PEP8 rules for Imports
.......................................................................................................................
259
Section 43.7: Importing specific names from a module
........................................................................................ 260
Section 43.8: Importing submodules
.......................................................................................................................
260
Section 43.9: Re-importing a module
......................................................................................................................
260
Section 43.10: __import__() function
..................................................................................................................... 261
Chapter 44: Di ☐ erence between Module and Package
...................................................................... 262
Section 44.1: Modules
................................................................................................................................................
262
Section 44.2: Packages
.............................................................................................................................................
262
Chapter 45: Math Module
....................................................................................................................................
264
Section 45.1: Rounding: round, floor, ceil, trunc
...................................................................................................... 264
Section 45.2: Trigonometry
......................................................................................................................................
265
Section 45.3: Pow for faster exponentiation
........................................................................................................... 266
Section 45.4: Infinity and NaN ("not a number")
................................................................................................... 266
Section 45.5: Logarithms
..........................................................................................................................................
269
Section 45.6: Constants
............................................................................................................................................
269
Section 45.7: Imaginary Numbers
...........................................................................................................................
270
Section 45.8: Copying signs
.....................................................................................................................................
270
Section 45.9: Complex numbers and the cmath module
...................................................................................... 270
Chapter 46: Complex math
.................................................................................................................................
273
Section 46.1: Advanced complex arithmetic
........................................................................................................... 273
Section 46.2: Basic complex arithmetic
.................................................................................................................. 274
Chapter 47: Collections module
.......................................................................................................................
275
Section 47.1: collections.Counter
..............................................................................................................................
275
Section 47.2: collections.OrderedDict
......................................................................................................................
276
Section 47.3: collections.defaultdict
.........................................................................................................................
277
Section 47.4: collections.namedtuple
......................................................................................................................
278
Section 47.5: collections.deque
................................................................................................................................
279
Section 47.6: collections.ChainMap
..........................................................................................................................
280
Chapter 48: Operator module
...........................................................................................................................
282
Section 48.1: Itemgetter
............................................................................................................................................
282
Section 48.2: Operators as alternative to an infix operator
................................................................................. 282
Section 48.3: Methodcaller
.......................................................................................................................................
282
Chapter 49: JSON Module
....................................................................................................................................
284
Section 49.1: Storing data in a file
............................................................................................................................
284
Section 49.2: Retrieving data from a file
................................................................................................................ 284
Section 49.3: Formatting JSON output
................................................................................................................... 284
Section 49.4: `load` vs `loads`, `dump` vs `dumps`
................................................................................................... 285
Section 49.5: Calling `json.tool` from the command line to pretty-print JSON
output ...................................... 286
Section 49.6: JSON encoding custom objects
........................................................................................................ 286
Section 49.7: Creating JSON from Python dict
...................................................................................................... 287
Section 49.8: Creating Python dict from JSON
...................................................................................................... 287
Chapter 50: Sqlite3 Module
.................................................................................................................................
289
Section 50.1: Sqlite3 - Not require separate server process
................................................................................. 289
Section 50.2: Getting the values from the database and Error handling
........................................................... 289
Chapter 51: The os Module
...................................................................................................................................
291
Section 51.1: makedirs - recursive directory creation
............................................................................................ 291
Section 51.2: Create a directory
...............................................................................................................................
292
Section 51.3: Get current directory
..........................................................................................................................
292
Section 51.4: Determine the name of the operating system
................................................................................ 292
Section 51.5: Remove a directory
............................................................................................................................
292
Section 51.6: Follow a symlink (POSIX)
.................................................................................................................... 292
Section 51.7: Change permissions on a file
............................................................................................................. 292
Chapter 52: The locale Module
..........................................................................................................................
293
Section 52.1: Currency Formatting US Dollars Using the locale Module
............................................................. 293
Chapter 53: Itertools Module
..............................................................................................................................
294
Section 53.1: Combinations method in Itertools Module
....................................................................................... 294
Section 53.2: itertools.dropwhile
..............................................................................................................................
294
Section 53.3: Zipping two iterators until they are both exhausted
...................................................................... 295
Section 53.4: Take a slice of a generator
............................................................................................................... 295
Section 53.5: Grouping items from an iterable object using a function
.............................................................. 296
Section 53.6: itertools.takewhile
...............................................................................................................................
297
Section 53.7: itertools.permutations
........................................................................................................................
297
Section 53.8: itertools.repeat
....................................................................................................................................
298
Section 53.9: Get an accumulated sum of numbers in an iterable
...................................................................... 298
Section 53.10: Cycle through elements in an iterator
............................................................................................ 298
Section 53.11: itertools.product
.................................................................................................................................
298
Section 53.12: itertools.count
....................................................................................................................................
299
Section 53.13: Chaining multiple iterators together
............................................................................................... 300
Chapter 54: Asyncio Module
...............................................................................................................................
301
Section 54.1: Coroutine and Delegation Syntax
..................................................................................................... 301
Section 54.2: Asynchronous Executors
................................................................................................................... 302
Section 54.3: Using UVLoop
.....................................................................................................................................
303
Section 54.4: Synchronization Primitive: Event
....................................................................................................... 303
Section 54.5: A Simple Websocket
..........................................................................................................................
304
Section 54.6: Common Misconception about asyncio
.......................................................................................... 304
Chapter 55: Random module
.............................................................................................................................
307
Section 55.1: Creating a random user password
................................................................................................... 307
Section 55.2: Create cryptographically secure random numbers
....................................................................... 307
Section 55.3: Random and sequences: shu☐e, choice and sample
.................................................................... 308
Section 55.4: Creating random integers and floats: randint, randrange,
random, and uniform ...................... 309
Section 55.5: Reproducible random numbers: Seed and State
............................................................................ 310
Section 55.6: Random Binary Decision
................................................................................................................... 311
Chapter 56: Functools Module
...........................................................................................................................
312
Section 56.1: partial
.................................................................................................................................................
312
Section 56.2: cmp_to_key
.......................................................................................................................................
312
Section 56.3: lru_cache
.............................................................................................................................................
312
Section 56.4: total_ordering
.....................................................................................................................................
313
Section 56.5: reduce
.................................................................................................................................................
314
Chapter 57: The dis module
................................................................................................................................
315
Section 57.1: What is Python bytecode?
................................................................................................................. 315
Section 57.2: Constants in the dis module
.............................................................................................................. 315
Section 57.3: Disassembling modules
..................................................................................................................... 315
Chapter 58: The base64 Module
.......................................................................................................................
317
Section 58.1: Encoding and Decoding Base64
....................................................................................................... 318
Section 58.2: Encoding and Decoding Base32
....................................................................................................... 319
Section 58.3: Encoding and Decoding Base16
........................................................................................................ 320
Section 58.4: Encoding and Decoding ASCII85
...................................................................................................... 320
Section 58.5: Encoding and Decoding Base85
....................................................................................................... 321
Chapter 59: Queue Module
..................................................................................................................................
322
Section 59.1: Simple example
...................................................................................................................................
322
Chapter 60: Deque Module
..................................................................................................................................
324
Section 60.1: Basic deque using
...............................................................................................................................
324
Section 60.2: Available methods in deque
.............................................................................................................. 324
Section 60.3: limit deque size
...................................................................................................................................
325
Section 60.4: Breadth First Search
..........................................................................................................................
325
Chapter 61: Webbrowser Module
......................................................................................................................
326
Section 61.1: Opening a URL with Default Browser
................................................................................................ 326
Section 61.2: Opening a URL with Di☐erent Browsers
........................................................................................... 327
Chapter 62: tkinter
.................................................................................................................................................
328
Section 62.1: Geometry Managers
...........................................................................................................................
328
Section 62.2: A minimal tkinter Application
............................................................................................................ 329
Chapter 63: pyautogui module
..........................................................................................................................
331
Section 63.1: Mouse Functions
..................................................................................................................................
331
Section 63.2: Keyboard Functions
...........................................................................................................................
331
Section 63.3: Screenshot And Image Recognition
................................................................................................. 331
Chapter 64: Indexing and Slicing
......................................................................................................................
332
Section 64.1: Basic Slicing
.........................................................................................................................................
332
Section 64.2: Reversing an object
...........................................................................................................................
333
Section 64.3: Slice assignment
.................................................................................................................................
333
Section 64.4: Making a shallow copy of an array
.................................................................................................. 333
Section 64.5: Indexing custom classes: __getitem__, __setitem__ and
__delitem__ ................................... 334
Section 64.6: Basic Indexing
.....................................................................................................................................
335
Chapter 65: Plotting with Matplotlib
.............................................................................................................. 337
Section 65.1: Plots with Common X-axis but di☐erent Y-axis : Using
twinx() ....................................................... 337
Section 65.2: Plots with common Y-axis and di☐erent X-axis using twiny()
....................................................... 338
Section 65.3: A Simple Plot in Matplotlib
................................................................................................................. 340
Section 65.4: Adding more features to a simple plot : axis labels, title, axis
ticks, grid, and legend ................ 341
Section 65.5: Making multiple plots in the same figure by superimposition
similar to MATLAB ...................... 342
Section 65.6: Making multiple Plots in the same figure using plot
superimposition with separate plot commands
.................................................................................................................................................
343
Chapter 66: graph-tool
..........................................................................................................................................
345
Section 66.1: PyDotPlus
.............................................................................................................................................
345
Section 66.2: PyGraphviz
..........................................................................................................................................
345
Chapter 67: Generators
.........................................................................................................................................
347
Section 67.1: Introduction
..........................................................................................................................................
347
Section 67.2: Infinite sequences
...............................................................................................................................
349
Section 67.3: Sending objects to a generator
........................................................................................................ 350
Section 67.4: Yielding all values from another iterable
......................................................................................... 351
Section 67.5: Iteration
...............................................................................................................................................
351
Section 67.6: The next() function
.............................................................................................................................
351
Section 67.7: Coroutines
...........................................................................................................................................
352
Section 67.8: Refactoring list-building code
........................................................................................................... 352
Section 67.9: Yield with recursion: recursively listing all files in a directory
........................................................ 353
Section 67.10: Generator expressions
......................................................................................................................
354
Section 67.11: Using a generator to find Fibonacci Numbers
............................................................................... 354
Section 67.12: Searching
...........................................................................................................................................
354
Section 67.13: Iterating over generators in parallel
............................................................................................... 355
Chapter 68: Reduce
.................................................................................................................................................
356
Section 68.1: Overview
..............................................................................................................................................
356
Section 68.2: Using reduce
.......................................................................................................................................
356
Section 68.3: Cumulative product
............................................................................................................................
357
Section 68.4: Non short-circuit variant of any/all
................................................................................................. 357
Chapter 69: Map Function
....................................................................................................................................
358
Section 69.1: Basic use of map, itertools.imap and future_builtins.map
............................................................. 358

Section 69.2: Mapping each value in an iterable

................................................................................................... 358
Section 69.3: Mapping values of di☐erent iterables
.............................................................................................. 359
Section 69.4: Transposing with Map: Using "None" as function argument
(python 2.x only) .......................... 361
Section 69.5: Series and Parallel Mapping
.............................................................................................................. 361
Chapter 70: Exponentiation
................................................................................................................................
365
Section 70.1: Exponentiation using builtins: ** and pow()
...................................................................................... 365
Section 70.2: Square root: math.sqrt() and cmath.sqrt
......................................................................................... 365
Section 70.3: Modular exponentiation: pow() with 3 arguments
.......................................................................... 366
Section 70.4: Computing large integer roots
......................................................................................................... 366
Section 70.5: Exponentiation using the math module: math.pow()
..................................................................... 367
Section 70.6: Exponential function: math.exp() and cmath.exp()
......................................................................... 368
Section 70.7: Exponential function minus 1: math.expm1()
.................................................................................... 368
Section 70.8: Magic methods and exponentiation: builtin, math and cmath
...................................................... 369
Section 70.9: Roots: nth-root with fractional exponents
....................................................................................... 370
Chapter 71: Searching
............................................................................................................................................
371
Section 71.1: Searching for an element
.................................................................................................................... 371
Section 71.2: Searching in custom classes: __contains__ and __iter__
........................................................... 371
Section 71.3: Getting the index for strings: str.index(), str.rindex() and
str.find(), str.rfind() ............................... 372
Section 71.4: Getting the index list and tuples: list.index(), tuple.index()
.............................................................. 373
Section 71.5: Searching key(s) for a value in dict
................................................................................................... 373
Section 71.6: Getting the index for sorted sequences: bisect.bisect_left()
.......................................................... 374
Section 71.7: Searching nested sequences
............................................................................................................. 374
Chapter 72: Sorting, Minimum and Maximum
............................................................................................ 376
Section 72.1: Make custom classes orderable
........................................................................................................ 376
Section 72.2: Special case: dictionaries
................................................................................................................... 378
Section 72.3: Using the key argument
.................................................................................................................... 379
Section 72.4: Default Argument to max, min
......................................................................................................... 379
Section 72.5: Getting a sorted sequence
................................................................................................................ 380
Section 72.6: Extracting N largest or N smallest items from an iterable
............................................................ 380
Section 72.7: Getting the minimum or maximum of several values
.................................................................... 381
Section 72.8: Minimum and Maximum of a sequence
........................................................................................... 381
Chapter 73: Counting
..............................................................................................................................................
382
Section 73.1: Counting all occurrence of all items in an iterable:
collections.Counter ........................................ 382
Section 73.2: Getting the most common value(-s):
collections.Counter.most_common() ................................ 382
Section 73.3: Counting the occurrences of one item in a sequence: list.count()
and tuple.count() .................. 382
Section 73.4: Counting the occurrences of a substring in a string: str.count()
................................................... 383
Section 73.5: Counting occurrences in numpy array
............................................................................................ 383
Chapter 74: The Print Function
.........................................................................................................................
384
Section 74.1: Print basics
...........................................................................................................................................
384
Section 74.2: Print parameters
................................................................................................................................
385
Chapter 75: Regular Expressions (Regex)
................................................................................................... 388
Section 75.1: Matching the beginning of a string
................................................................................................... 388
Section 75.2: Searching
............................................................................................................................................
389
Section 75.3: Precompiled patterns
.........................................................................................................................
389
Section 75.4: Flags
................................................................................................................................................
390
Section 75.5: Replacing
.............................................................................................................................................
391
Section 75.6: Find All Non-Overlapping Matches
................................................................................................... 391
Section 75.7: Checking for allowed characters
...................................................................................................... 392
Section 75.8: Splitting a string using regular expressions
..................................................................................... 392
Section 75.9: Grouping
..............................................................................................................................................
392
Section 75.10: Escaping Special Characters
........................................................................................................... 393
Section 75.11: Match an expression only in specific locations
............................................................................... 394
Section 75.12: Iterating over matches using `re.finditer`
........................................................................................ 395
Chapter 76: Copying data
....................................................................................................................................
396
Section 76.1: Copy a dictionary
................................................................................................................................
396
Section 76.2: Performing a shallow copy
............................................................................................................... 396
Section 76.3: Performing a deep copy
.................................................................................................................... 396
Section 76.4: Performing a shallow copy of a list
.................................................................................................. 396
Section 76.5: Copy a set
...........................................................................................................................................
396
Chapter 77: Context Managers (“with” Statement)
............................................................................... 398
Section 77.1: Introduction to context managers and the with statement
............................................................ 398
Section 77.2: Writing your own context manager
................................................................................................. 398
Section 77.3: Writing your own contextmanager using generator syntax
......................................................... 399
Section 77.4: Multiple context managers
................................................................................................................ 400
Section 77.5: Assigning to a target
..........................................................................................................................
400
Section 77.6: Manage Resources
.............................................................................................................................
401
Chapter 78: The __name__ special variable
........................................................................................... 402
Section 78.1: __name__ == '__main__'
................................................................................................................. 402
Section 78.2: Use in logging
.....................................................................................................................................
402
Section 78.3: function_class_or_module.__name__
.......................................................................................... 402
Chapter 79: Checking Path Existence and Permissions
......................................................................... 404
Section 79.1: Perform checks using os.access
........................................................................................................ 404
Chapter 80: Creating Python packages
....................................................................................................... 406
Section 80.1: Introduction
.........................................................................................................................................
406
Section 80.2: Uploading to PyPI
..............................................................................................................................
406
Section 80.3: Making package executable
............................................................................................................. 408
Chapter 81: Usage of "pip" module: PyPI Package Manager
............................................................. 410
Section 81.1: Example use of commands
................................................................................................................ 410
Section 81.2: Handling ImportError Exception
........................................................................................................ 410
Section 81.3: Force install
..........................................................................................................................................
411
Chapter 82: pip: PyPI Package Manager
...................................................................................................... 412
Section 82.1: Install Packages
..................................................................................................................................
412
Section 82.2: To list all packages installed using `pip`
........................................................................................... 412
Section 82.3: Upgrade Packages
............................................................................................................................
412
Section 82.4: Uninstall Packages
.............................................................................................................................
413
Section 82.5: Updating all outdated packages on Linux
...................................................................................... 413
Section 82.6: Updating all outdated packages on Windows
................................................................................ 413
Section 82.7: Create a requirements.txt file of all packages on the system
....................................................... 413
Section 82.8: Using a certain Python version with pip
.......................................................................................... 414
Section 82.9: Create a requirements.txt file of packages only in the current
virtualenv .................................. 414
Section 82.10: Installing packages not yet on pip as wheels
................................................................................ 415
Chapter 83: Parsing Command Line arguments
...................................................................................... 418
Section 83.1: Hello world in argparse
......................................................................................................................
418
Section 83.2: Using command line arguments with argv
..................................................................................... 418
Section 83.3: Setting mutually exclusive arguments with argparse
.................................................................... 419
Section 83.4: Basic example with docopt
............................................................................................................... 420
Section 83.5: Custom parser error message with argparse
................................................................................. 420
Section 83.6: Conceptual grouping of arguments with
argparse.add_argument_group() ............................. 421
Section 83.7: Advanced example with docopt and docopt_dispatch
................................................................. 422

Chapter 84: Subprocess Library

......................................................................................................................
424
Section 84.1: More flexibility with Popen
................................................................................................................. 424
Section 84.2: Calling External Commands
.............................................................................................................. 425
Section 84.3: How to create the command list argument
.................................................................................... 425
Chapter 85: setup.py
..............................................................................................................................................
427
Section 85.1: Purpose of setup.py
............................................................................................................................
427
Section 85.2: Using source control metadata in setup.py
.................................................................................... 427
Section 85.3: Adding command line scripts to your python package
................................................................. 428
Section 85.4: Adding installation options
................................................................................................................ 428
Chapter 86: Recursion
............................................................................................................................................
430
Section 86.1: The What, How, and When of Recursion
.......................................................................................... 430
Section 86.2: Tree exploration with recursion
........................................................................................................ 433
Section 86.3: Sum of numbers from 1 to n
.............................................................................................................. 434
Section 86.4: Increasing the Maximum Recursion Depth
...................................................................................... 434
Section 86.5: Tail Recursion - Bad Practice
............................................................................................................ 435
Section 86.6: Tail Recursion Optimization Through Stack Introspection
............................................................ 435
Chapter 87: Type Hints
..........................................................................................................................................
437
Section 87.1: Adding types to a function
................................................................................................................. 437
Section 87.2: NamedTuple
.......................................................................................................................................
438
Section 87.3: Generic Types
.....................................................................................................................................
438
Section 87.4: Variables and Attributes
.................................................................................................................... 438
Section 87.5: Class Members and Methods
............................................................................................................ 439
Section 87.6: Type hints for keyword arguments
.................................................................................................. 439
Chapter 88: Exceptions
..........................................................................................................................................
440
Section 88.1: Catching Exceptions
............................................................................................................................
440
Section 88.2: Do not catch everything!
................................................................................................................... 440
Section 88.3: Re-raising exceptions
.........................................................................................................................
441
Section 88.4: Catching multiple exceptions
............................................................................................................ 441
Section 88.5: Exception Hierarchy
...........................................................................................................................
442
Section 88.6: Else
.................................................................................................................................................
444
Section 88.7: Raising Exceptions
..............................................................................................................................
444
Section 88.8: Creating custom exception types
..................................................................................................... 445
Section 88.9: Practical examples of exception handling
....................................................................................... 445
Section 88.10: Exceptions are Objects too
.............................................................................................................. 446
Section 88.11: Running clean-up code with finally
.................................................................................................. 446
Section 88.12: Chain exceptions with raise from
.................................................................................................... 447
Chapter 89: Raise Custom Errors / Exceptions
......................................................................................... 448
Section 89.1: Custom Exception
...............................................................................................................................
448
Section 89.2: Catch custom Exception
.................................................................................................................... 448
Chapter 90: Commonwealth Exceptions
....................................................................................................... 450
Section 90.1: Other Errors
.........................................................................................................................................
450
Section 90.2: NameError: name '???' is not defined
.............................................................................................. 451
Section 90.3: TypeErrors
..........................................................................................................................................
452
Section 90.4: Syntax Error on good code
............................................................................................................... 453
Section 90.5: IndentationErrors (or indentation SyntaxErrors)
............................................................................ 454
Chapter 91: urllib
.................................................................................................................................................
456
Section 91.1: HTTP GET
..............................................................................................................................................
456
Section 91.2: HTTP POST
..........................................................................................................................................
456
Section 91.3: Decode received bytes according to content type encoding
........................................................ 457

Chapter 92: Web scraping with Python

......................................................................................................... 458
Section 92.1: Scraping using the Scrapy framework
............................................................................................. 458
Section 92.2: Scraping using Selenium WebDriver
................................................................................................ 458
Section 92.3: Basic example of using requests and lxml to scrape some data
................................................. 459
Section 92.4: Maintaining web-scraping session with requests
........................................................................... 459
Section 92.5: Scraping using BeautifulSoup4
......................................................................................................... 460
Section 92.6: Simple web content download with urllib.request
.......................................................................... 460
Section 92.7: Modify Scrapy user agent
................................................................................................................. 460
Section 92.8: Scraping with curl
...............................................................................................................................
460
Chapter 93: HTML Parsing
....................................................................................................................................
462
Section 93.1: Using CSS selectors in BeautifulSoup
................................................................................................ 462
Section 93.2: PyQuery
...............................................................................................................................................
462
Section 93.3: Locate a text after an element in BeautifulSoup
............................................................................ 463
Chapter 94: Manipulating XML
..........................................................................................................................
464
Section 94.1: Opening and reading using an ElementTree
................................................................................... 464
Section 94.2: Create and Build XML Documents
.................................................................................................... 464
Section 94.3: Modifying an XML File
........................................................................................................................
465
Section 94.4: Searching the XML with XPath
.......................................................................................................... 465
Section 94.5: Opening and reading large XML files using iterparse
(incremental parsing) ............................. 466
Chapter 95: Python Requests Post
.................................................................................................................. 468
Section 95.1: Simple Post
..........................................................................................................................................
468
Section 95.2: Form Encoded Data
...........................................................................................................................
469
Section 95.3: File Upload
..........................................................................................................................................
469
Section 95.4: Responses
...........................................................................................................................................
470
Section 95.5: Authentication
.....................................................................................................................................
470
Section 95.6: Proxies
.................................................................................................................................................
471
Chapter 96: Distribution
........................................................................................................................................
473
Section 96.1: py2app
.................................................................................................................................................
473
Section 96.2: cx_Freeze
............................................................................................................................................
474
Chapter 97: Property Objects
............................................................................................................................
475
Section 97.1: Using the @property decorator for read-write properties
............................................................. 475
Section 97.2: Using the @property decorator
....................................................................................................... 475
Section 97.3: Overriding just a getter, setter or a deleter of a property object
................................................. 476
Section 97.4: Using properties without decorators
................................................................................................ 476
Chapter 98: Overloading
......................................................................................................................................
479
Section 98.1: Operator overloading
.........................................................................................................................
479
Section 98.2: Magic/Dunder Methods
.................................................................................................................... 480
Section 98.3: Container and sequence types
......................................................................................................... 481
Section 98.4: Callable types
.....................................................................................................................................
482
Section 98.5: Handling unimplemented behaviour
................................................................................................ 482
Chapter 99: Polymorphism
..................................................................................................................................
484
Section 99.1: Duck Typing
.........................................................................................................................................
484
Section 99.2: Basic Polymorphism
..........................................................................................................................
484
Chapter 100: Method Overriding
......................................................................................................................
488
Section 100.1: Basic method overriding
................................................................................................................... 488
Chapter 101: User-Defined Methods
................................................................................................................ 489
Section 101.1: Creating user-defined method objects
............................................................................................ 489
Section 101.2: Turtle example
...................................................................................................................................
490
Chapter 102: String representations of class instances: __str__ and
__repr__ methods
.................................................................................................................................................
491
Section 102.1: Motivation
...........................................................................................................................................
491
Section 102.2: Both methods implemented, eval-round-trip style __repr__()
.................................................. 495
Chapter 103: Debugging
........................................................................................................................................
496
Section 103.1: Via IPython and ipdb
.........................................................................................................................
496
Section 103.2: The Python Debugger: Step-through Debugging with _pdb_
.................................................... 496
Section 103.3: Remote debugger
.............................................................................................................................
498
Chapter 104: Reading and Writing CSV
........................................................................................................ 499
Section 104.1: Using pandas
.....................................................................................................................................
499
Section 104.2: Writing a TSV file
..............................................................................................................................
499
Chapter 105: Writing to CSV from String or List
...................................................................................... 501
Section 105.1: Basic Write Example
..........................................................................................................................
501
Section 105.2: Appending a String as a newline in a CSV file
............................................................................... 501
Chapter 106: Dynamic code execution with `exec` and `eval`
............................................................. 502
Section 106.1: Executing code provided by untrusted user using exec, eval, or
ast.literal_eval ....................... 502
Section 106.2: Evaluating a string containing a Python literal with
ast.literal_eval ........................................... 502
Section 106.3: Evaluating statements with exec
..................................................................................................... 502
Section 106.4: Evaluating an expression with eval
................................................................................................. 503
Section 106.5: Precompiling an expression to evaluate it multiple times
............................................................ 503
Section 106.6: Evaluating an expression with eval using custom globals
........................................................... 503
Chapter 107: PyInstaller - Distributing Python Code
.............................................................................. 504
Section 107.1: Installation and Setup
........................................................................................................................
504
Section 107.2: Using Pyinstaller
................................................................................................................................
504
Section 107.3: Bundling to One Folder
..................................................................................................................... 505
Section 107.4: Bundling to a Single File
................................................................................................................... 505
Chapter 108: Data Visualization with Python
............................................................................................. 506
Section 108.1: Seaborn
..............................................................................................................................................
506
Section 108.2: Matplotlib
...........................................................................................................................................
508
Section 108.3: Plotly
.................................................................................................................................................
509
Section 108.4: MayaVI
...............................................................................................................................................
511
Chapter 109: The Interpreter (Command Line Console)
....................................................................... 513
Section 109.1: Getting general help
..........................................................................................................................
513
Section 109.2: Referring to the last expression
...................................................................................................... 513
Section 109.3: Opening the Python console
............................................................................................................ 514
Section 109.4: The PYTHONSTARTUP variable
...................................................................................................... 514
Section 109.5: Command line arguments
............................................................................................................... 514
Section 109.6: Getting help about an object
........................................................................................................... 515
Chapter 110: *args and **kwargs
.......................................................................................................................
518
Section 110.1: Using **kwargs when writing functions
............................................................................................ 518
Section 110.2: Using *args when writing functions
.................................................................................................. 518
Section 110.3: Populating kwarg values with a dictionary
..................................................................................... 519
Section 110.4: Keyword-only and Keyword-required arguments
........................................................................ 519
Section 110.5: Using **kwargs when calling functions
............................................................................................ 519
Section 110.6: **kwargs and default values
............................................................................................................. 519
Section 110.7: Using *args when calling functions
.................................................................................................. 520
Chapter 111: Garbage Collection
........................................................................................................................
521
Section 111.1: Reuse of primitive objects
.................................................................................................................. 521
Section 111.2: E☐ects of the del command
.............................................................................................................. 521
Section 111.3: Reference Counting
............................................................................................................................
522
Section 111.4: Garbage Collector for Reference Cycles
......................................................................................... 522
Section 111.5: Forcefully deallocating objects
......................................................................................................... 523
Section 111.6: Viewing the refcount of an object
..................................................................................................... 524
Section 111.7: Do not wait for the garbage collection to clean up
........................................................................ 524
Section 111.8: Managing garbage collection
........................................................................................................... 524
Chapter 112: Pickle data serialisation
............................................................................................................. 526
Section 112.1: Using Pickle to serialize and deserialize an object
.......................................................................... 526
Section 112.2: Customize Pickled Data
.................................................................................................................... 526
Chapter 113: Binary Data
......................................................................................................................................
528
Section 113.1: Format a list of values into a byte object
........................................................................................ 528
Section 113.2: Unpack a byte object according to a format string
...................................................................... 528
Section 113.3: Packing a structure
............................................................................................................................
528
Chapter 114: Idioms
.................................................................................................................................................
530
Section 114.1: Dictionary key initializations
.............................................................................................................. 530
Section 114.2: Switching variables
............................................................................................................................
530
Section 114.3: Use truth value testing
......................................................................................................................
530
Section 114.4: Test for "__main__" to avoid unexpected code execution
.......................................................... 531
Chapter 115: Data Serialization
..........................................................................................................................
533
Section 115.1: Serialization using JSON
.................................................................................................................... 533
Section 115.2: Serialization using Pickle
................................................................................................................... 533
Chapter 116: Multiprocessing
...............................................................................................................................
535
Section 116.1: Running Two Simple Processes
......................................................................................................... 535
Section 116.2: Using Pool and Map
...........................................................................................................................
535
Chapter 117: Multithreading
.................................................................................................................................
537
Section 117.1: Basics of multithreading
.................................................................................................................... 537
Section 117.2: Communicating between threads
.................................................................................................... 538
Section 117.3: Creating a worker pool
......................................................................................................................
539
Section 117.4: Advanced use of multithreads
.......................................................................................................... 539
Section 117.5: Stoppable Thread with a while Loop
............................................................................................... 541
Chapter 118: Processes and Threads
.............................................................................................................. 542
Section 118.1: Global Interpreter Lock
......................................................................................................................
542
Section 118.2: Running in Multiple Threads
............................................................................................................. 543
Section 118.3: Running in Multiple Processes
.......................................................................................................... 544
Section 118.4: Sharing State Between Threads
....................................................................................................... 544
Section 118.5: Sharing State Between Processes
.................................................................................................... 545
Chapter 119: Python concurrency
..................................................................................................................... 546
Section 119.1: The multiprocessing module
............................................................................................................. 546
Section 119.2: The threading module
.......................................................................................................................
547
Section 119.3: Passing data between multiprocessing processes
........................................................................ 547
Chapter 120: Parallel computation
.................................................................................................................. 550
Section 120.1: Using the multiprocessing module to parallelise tasks
................................................................. 550
Section 120.2: Using a C-extension to parallelize tasks
........................................................................................ 550
Section 120.3: Using Parent and Children scripts to execute code in parallel
.................................................... 550
Section 120.4: Using PyPar module to parallelize
.................................................................................................. 551
Chapter 121: Sockets
................................................................................................................................................
552
Section 121.1: Raw Sockets on Linux
.........................................................................................................................
552
Section 121.2: Sending data via UDP
.......................................................................................................................
552
Section 121.3: Receiving data via UDP
..................................................................................................................... 553
Section 121.4: Sending data via TCP
........................................................................................................................
553
Section 121.5: Multi-threaded TCP Socket Server
................................................................................................... 553
Chapter 122: Websockets
......................................................................................................................................
556
Section 122.1: Simple Echo with aiohttp
................................................................................................................... 556
Section 122.2: Wrapper Class with aiohttp
............................................................................................................. 556
Section 122.3: Using Autobahn as a Websocket Factory
...................................................................................... 557
Chapter 123: Sockets And Message Encryption/Decryption Between
Client and Server
.................................................................................................................................................
559
Section 123.1: Server side Implementation
.............................................................................................................. 559
Section 123.2: Client side Implementation
.............................................................................................................. 561
Chapter 124: Python Networking
..................................................................................................................... 563
Section 124.1: Creating a Simple Http Server
.......................................................................................................... 563
Section 124.2: Creating a TCP server
......................................................................................................................
563
Section 124.3: Creating a UDP Server
..................................................................................................................... 564
Section 124.4: Start Simple HttpServer in a thread and open the browser
......................................................... 564
Section 124.5: The simplest Python socket client-server example
....................................................................... 565
Chapter 125: Python HTTP Server
.................................................................................................................... 567
Section 125.1: Running a simple HTTP server
......................................................................................................... 567
Section 125.2: Serving files
........................................................................................................................................
567
Section 125.3: Basic handling of GET, POST, PUT using
BaseHTTPRequestHandler ......................................... 568
Section 125.4: Programmatic API of SimpleHTTPServer
....................................................................................... 569
Chapter 126: Flask
.................................................................................................................................................
571
Section 126.1: Files and Templates
...........................................................................................................................
571
Section 126.2: The basics
..........................................................................................................................................
571
Section 126.3: Routing URLs
.....................................................................................................................................
572
Section 126.4: HTTP Methods
...................................................................................................................................
573
Section 126.5: Jinja Templating
...............................................................................................................................
573
Section 126.6: The Request Object
..........................................................................................................................
574
Chapter 127: Introduction to RabbitMQ using AMQPStorm
................................................................ 576
Section 127.1: How to consume messages from RabbitMQ
.................................................................................. 576
Section 127.2: How to publish messages to RabbitMQ
......................................................................................... 577
Section 127.3: How to create a delayed queue in RabbitMQ
................................................................................ 577
Chapter 128: Descriptor
.........................................................................................................................................
580
Section 128.1: Simple descriptor
...............................................................................................................................
580
Section 128.2: Two-way conversions
.......................................................................................................................
581
Chapter 129: tempfile NamedTemporaryFile
............................................................................................. 582
Section 129.1: Create (and write to a) known, persistent temporary file
............................................................. 582
Chapter 130: Input, Subset and Output External Data Files using
Pandas ................................. 584
Section 130.1: Basic Code to Import, Subset and Write External Data Files
Using Pandas ............................... 584
Chapter 131: Unzipping Files
................................................................................................................................
586
Section 131.1: Using Python ZipFile.extractall() to decompress a ZIP file
............................................................ 586
Section 131.2: Using Python TarFile.extractall() to decompress a tarball
........................................................... 586
Chapter 132: Working with ZIP archives
........................................................................................................ 587
Section 132.1: Examining Zipfile Contents
............................................................................................................... 587
Section 132.2: Opening Zip Files
...............................................................................................................................
587
Section 132.3: Extracting zip file contents to a directory
....................................................................................... 588
Section 132.4: Creating new archives
......................................................................................................................
588
Chapter 133: Getting start with GZip
.............................................................................................................. 589
Section 133.1: Read and write GNU zip files
............................................................................................................ 589
Chapter 134: Stack
.................................................................................................................................................
590
Section 134.1: Creating a Stack class with a List Object
........................................................................................ 590
Section 134.2: Parsing Parentheses
.........................................................................................................................
591
Chapter 135: Working around the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL)
..................................................... 593
Section 135.1: Multiprocessing.Pool
..........................................................................................................................
593
Section 135.2: Cython nogil:
......................................................................................................................................
594
Chapter 136: Deployment
.....................................................................................................................................
595
Section 136.1: Uploading a Conda Package
............................................................................................................ 595
Chapter 137: Logging
..............................................................................................................................................
597
Section 137.1: Introduction to Python Logging
........................................................................................................ 597
Section 137.2: Logging exceptions
...........................................................................................................................
598
Chapter 138: Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI)
............................................................................. 601
Section 138.1: Server Object (Method)
..................................................................................................................... 601
Chapter 139: Python Server Sent Events
...................................................................................................... 602
Section 139.1: Flask SSE
.............................................................................................................................................
602
Section 139.2: Asyncio SSE
........................................................................................................................................
602
Chapter 140: Alternatives to switch statement from other languages
....................................... 604
Section 140.1: Use what the language o☐ers: the if/else construct
..................................................................... 604
Section 140.2: Use a dict of functions
......................................................................................................................
604
Section 140.3: Use class introspection
..................................................................................................................... 605
Section 140.4: Using a context manager
................................................................................................................ 606
Chapter 141: List destructuring (aka packing and unpacking)
......................................................... 607
Section 141.1: Destructuring assignment
................................................................................................................. 607
Section 141.2: Packing function arguments
............................................................................................................ 608
Section 141.3: Unpacking function arguments
........................................................................................................ 610
Chapter 142: Accessing Python source code and bytecode
.............................................................. 611
Section 142.1: Display the bytecode of a function
.................................................................................................. 611
Section 142.2: Display the source code of an object
............................................................................................. 611
Section 142.3: Exploring the code object of a function
.......................................................................................... 612
Chapter 143: Mixins
.................................................................................................................................................
613
Section 143.1: Mixin
.................................................................................................................................................
613
Section 143.2: Overriding Methods in Mixins
........................................................................................................... 614
Chapter 144: Attribute Access
...........................................................................................................................
615
Section 144.1: Basic Attribute Access using the Dot Notation
............................................................................... 615
Section 144.2: Setters, Getters & Properties
............................................................................................................ 615
Chapter 145: ArcPy
.................................................................................................................................................
618
Section 145.1: createDissolvedGDB to create a file gdb on the workspace
........................................................ 618
Section 145.2: Printing one field's value for all rows of feature class in file
geodatabase using Search Cursor
.................................................................................................................................................
618
Chapter 146: Abstract Base Classes (abc)
................................................................................................... 619
Section 146.1: Setting the ABCMeta metaclass
....................................................................................................... 619
Section 146.2: Why/How to use ABCMeta and @abstractmethod
...................................................................... 619
Chapter 147: Plugin and Extension Classes
................................................................................................. 621
Section 147.1: Mixins
.................................................................................................................................................
621
Section 147.2: Plugins with Customized Classes
..................................................................................................... 622
Chapter 148: Immutable datatypes(int, float, str, tuple and frozensets)
.................................. 624
Section 148.1: Individual characters of strings are not assignable
....................................................................... 624
Section 148.2: Tuple's individual members aren't assignable
............................................................................... 624
Section 148.3: Frozenset's are immutable and not assignable
............................................................................. 624
Chapter 149: Incompatibilities moving from Python 2 to Python 3
................................................ 625
Section 149.1: Integer Division
...................................................................................................................................
625
Section 149.2: Unpacking Iterables
..........................................................................................................................
626
Section 149.3: Strings: Bytes versus Unicode
.......................................................................................................... 628
Section 149.4: Print statement vs. Print function
.................................................................................................... 630
Section 149.5: Di☐erences between range and xrange functions
........................................................................ 631
Section 149.6: Raising and handling Exceptions
..................................................................................................... 632
Section 149.7: Leaked variables in list comprehension
.......................................................................................... 634
Section 149.8: True, False and None
........................................................................................................................
635
Section 149.9: User Input
...........................................................................................................................................
635
Section 149.10: Comparison of di☐erent types
....................................................................................................... 636
Section 149.11: .next() method on iterators renamed
............................................................................................. 636
Section 149.12: filter(), map() and zip() return iterators instead of sequences
................................................... 637
Section 149.13: Renamed modules
...........................................................................................................................
637
Section 149.14: Removed operators <> and ``, synonymous with != and
repr() ................................................... 638
Section 149.15: long vs. int
.........................................................................................................................................
638
Section 149.16: All classes are "new-style classes" in Python 3
............................................................................ 639
Section 149.17: Reduce is no longer a built-in
......................................................................................................... 640
Section 149.18: Absolute/Relative Imports
.............................................................................................................. 640
Section 149.19: map()
................................................................................................................................................
642
Section 149.20: The round() function tie-breaking and return type
.................................................................... 643
Section 149.21: File I/O
..............................................................................................................................................
644
Section 149.22: cmp function removed in Python 3
............................................................................................... 644
Section 149.23: Octal Constants
...............................................................................................................................
645
Section 149.24: Return value when writing to a file object
.................................................................................... 645
Section 149.25: exec statement is a function in Python 3
...................................................................................... 645
Section 149.26: encode/decode to hex no longer available
................................................................................. 646
Section 149.27: Dictionary method changes
.......................................................................................................... 647
Section 149.28: Class Boolean Value
.......................................................................................................................
647
Section 149.29: hasattr function bug in Python 2
................................................................................................... 648
Chapter 150: 2to3 tool
............................................................................................................................................
650
Section 150.1: Basic Usage
........................................................................................................................................
650
Chapter 151: Non-o ☐ cial Python implementations
................................................................................ 652
Section 151.1: IronPython
...........................................................................................................................................
652
Section 151.2: Jython
.................................................................................................................................................
652
Section 151.3: Transcrypt
..........................................................................................................................................
653
Chapter 152: Abstract syntax tree
................................................................................................................... 656
Section 152.1: Analyze functions in a python script
................................................................................................ 656
Chapter 153: Unicode and bytes
.......................................................................................................................
658
Section 153.1: Encoding/decoding error handling
.................................................................................................. 658
Section 153.2: File I/O
................................................................................................................................................
658
Section 153.3: Basics
.................................................................................................................................................
659
Chapter 154: Python Serial Communication (pyserial)
......................................................................... 661
Section 154.1: Initialize serial device
.........................................................................................................................
661
Section 154.2: Read from serial port
.......................................................................................................................
661
Section 154.3: Check what serial ports are available on your machine
.............................................................. 661
Chapter 155: Neo4j and Cypher using Py2Neo
......................................................................................... 664
Section 155.1: Adding Nodes to Neo4j Graph
.......................................................................................................... 664
Section 155.2: Importing and Authenticating
.......................................................................................................... 664
Section 155.3: Adding Relationships to Neo4j Graph
............................................................................................. 664
Section 155.4: Query 1 : Autocomplete on News Titles
.......................................................................................... 664
Section 155.5: Query 2 : Get News Articles by Location on a particular date
..................................................... 665
Section 155.6: Cypher Query Samples
.................................................................................................................... 665
Chapter 156: Basic Curses with Python
.......................................................................................................... 666
Section 156.1: The wrapper() helper function
......................................................................................................... 666
Section 156.2: Basic Invocation Example
................................................................................................................ 666
Chapter 157: Templates in python
................................................................................................................... 667
Section 157.1: Simple data output program using template
................................................................................. 667
Section 157.2: Changing delimiter
............................................................................................................................
667
Chapter 158: Pillow
.................................................................................................................................................
668
Section 158.1: Read Image File
.................................................................................................................................
668
Section 158.2: Convert files to JPEG
........................................................................................................................
668
Chapter 159: The pass statement
.................................................................................................................... 669
Section 159.1: Ignore an exception
...........................................................................................................................
669
Section 159.2: Create a new Exception that can be caught
.................................................................................. 669
Chapter 160: CLI subcommands with precise help output
.................................................................. 671
Section 160.1: Native way (no libraries)
................................................................................................................... 671
Section 160.2: argparse (default help formatter)
.................................................................................................. 671
Section 160.3: argparse (custom help formatter)
.................................................................................................. 672
Chapter 161: Database Access
............................................................................................................................
674
Section 161.1: SQLite
.................................................................................................................................................
674
Section 161.2: Accessing MySQL database using MySQLdb
................................................................................. 679
Section 161.3: Connection
..........................................................................................................................................
680
Section 161.4: PostgreSQL Database access using psycopg2
.............................................................................. 681
Section 161.5: Oracle database
................................................................................................................................
682
Section 161.6: Using sqlalchemy
...............................................................................................................................
684
Chapter 162: Connecting Python to SQL Server
....................................................................................... 685
Section 162.1: Connect to Server, Create Table, Query Data
................................................................................ 685
Chapter 163: PostgreSQL
......................................................................................................................................
686
Section 163.1: Getting Started
...................................................................................................................................
686
Chapter 164: Python and Excel
..........................................................................................................................
687
Section 164.1: Read the excel data using xlrd module
........................................................................................... 687
Section 164.2: Format Excel files with xlsxwriter
..................................................................................................... 687
Section 164.3: Put list data into a Excel's file
........................................................................................................... 688
Section 164.4: OpenPyXL
..........................................................................................................................................
689
Section 164.5: Create excel charts with xlsxwriter
.................................................................................................. 689
Chapter 165: Turtle Graphics
..............................................................................................................................
693
Section 165.1: Ninja Twist (Turtle Graphics)
............................................................................................................ 693
Chapter 166: Python Persistence
......................................................................................................................
694
Section 166.1: Python Persistence
............................................................................................................................
694
Section 166.2: Function utility for save and load
.................................................................................................... 695
Chapter 167: Design Patterns
.............................................................................................................................
696
Section 167.1: Introduction to design patterns and Singleton Pattern
................................................................. 696
Section 167.2: Strategy Pattern
................................................................................................................................
698
Section 167.3: Proxy
.................................................................................................................................................
699
Chapter 168: hashlib
................................................................................................................................................
701
Section 168.1: MD5 hash of a string
.........................................................................................................................
701
Section 168.2: algorithm provided by OpenSSL
..................................................................................................... 702
Chapter 169: Creating a Windows service using Python
....................................................................... 703
Section 169.1: A Python script that can be run as a service
.................................................................................. 703
Section 169.2: Running a Flask web application as a service
............................................................................... 704
Chapter 170: Mutable vs Immutable (and Hashable) in Python
....................................................... 706
Section 170.1: Mutable vs Immutable
.......................................................................................................................
706
Section 170.2: Mutable and Immutable as Arguments
.......................................................................................... 708
Chapter 171: configparser
....................................................................................................................................
710
Section 171.1: Creating configuration file programmatically
................................................................................. 710
Section 171.2: Basic usage
.........................................................................................................................................
710
Chapter 172: Optical Character Recognition
.............................................................................................. 711
Section 172.1: PyTesseract
........................................................................................................................................
711
Section 172.2: PyOCR
................................................................................................................................................
711
Chapter 173: Virtual environments
.................................................................................................................. 713
Section 173.1: Creating and using a virtual environment
....................................................................................... 713
Section 173.2: Specifying specific python version to use in script on
Unix/Linux ............................................... 715
Section 173.3: Creating a virtual environment for a di☐erent version of
python ............................................... 715
Section 173.4: Making virtual environments using Anaconda
.............................................................................. 715
Section 173.5: Managing multiple virtual environments with
virtualenvwrapper ............................................... 716
Section 173.6: Installing packages in a virtual environment
................................................................................. 717
Section 173.7: Discovering which virtual environment you are using
.................................................................. 718
Section 173.8: Checking if running inside a virtual environment
.......................................................................... 719
Section 173.9: Using virtualenv with fish shell
......................................................................................................... 719
Chapter 174: Python Virtual Environment - virtualenv
......................................................................... 721
Section 174.1: Installation
..........................................................................................................................................
721
Section 174.2: Usage
.................................................................................................................................................
721
Section 174.3: Install a package in your Virtualenv
............................................................................................... 721
Section 174.4: Other useful virtualenv commands
................................................................................................. 722
Chapter 175: Virtual environment with virtualenvwrapper
................................................................ 724
Section 175.1: Create virtual environment with virtualenvwrapper
...................................................................... 724
Chapter 176: Create virtual environment with virtualenvwrapper in
windows ........................ 726
Section 176.1: Virtual environment with virtualenvwrapper for windows
............................................................. 726
Chapter 177: sys
.................................................................................................................................................
727
Section 177.1: Command line arguments
................................................................................................................ 727
Section 177.2: Script name
........................................................................................................................................
727
Section 177.3: Standard error stream
......................................................................................................................
727
Section 177.4: Ending the process prematurely and returning an exit code
....................................................... 727
Chapter 178: ChemPy - python package
...................................................................................................... 728
Section 178.1: Parsing formulae
...............................................................................................................................
728
Section 178.2: Balancing stoichiometry of a chemical reaction
........................................................................... 728
Section 178.3: Balancing reactions
..........................................................................................................................
728
Section 178.4: Chemical equilibria
............................................................................................................................
729
Section 178.5: Ionic strength
.....................................................................................................................................
729
Section 178.6: Chemical kinetics (system of ordinary di☐erential equations)
.................................................... 729
Chapter 179: pygame
..............................................................................................................................................
731
Section 179.1: Pygame's mixer module
.................................................................................................................... 731
Section 179.2: Installing pygame
..............................................................................................................................
732
Chapter 180: Pyglet
.................................................................................................................................................
734
Section 180.1: Installation of Pyglet
..........................................................................................................................
734
Section 180.2: Hello World in Pyglet
........................................................................................................................
734
Section 180.3: Playing Sound in Pyglet
.................................................................................................................... 734
Section 180.4: Using Pyglet for OpenGL
................................................................................................................. 734
Section 180.5: Drawing Points Using Pyglet and OpenGL
..................................................................................... 734
Chapter 181: Audio
.................................................................................................................................................
736
Section 181.1: Working with WAV files
......................................................................................................................
736
Section 181.2: Convert any soundfile with python and ☐mpeg
............................................................................ 736
Section 181.3: Playing Windows' beeps
.................................................................................................................... 736
Section 181.4: Audio With Pyglet
..............................................................................................................................
737
Chapter 182: pyaudio
..............................................................................................................................................
738
Section 182.1: Callback Mode Audio I/O
.................................................................................................................. 738
Section 182.2: Blocking Mode Audio I/O
................................................................................................................. 739
Chapter 183: shelve
.................................................................................................................................................
741
Section 183.1: Creating a new Shelf
..........................................................................................................................
741
Section 183.2: Sample code for shelve
.................................................................................................................... 742
Section 183.3: To summarize the interface (key is a string, data is an arbitrary
object): .................................. 742
Section 183.4: Write-back
.........................................................................................................................................
742
Chapter 184: IoT Programming with Python and Raspberry PI
....................................................... 744
Section 184.1: Example - Temperature sensor
........................................................................................................ 744
Chapter 185: kivy - Cross-platform Python Framework for NUI
Development ....................... 748
Section 185.1: First App
..............................................................................................................................................
748
Chapter 186: Pandas Transform: Preform operations on groups and
concatenate the

results
.................................................................................................................................................
750
Section 186.1: Simple transform
...............................................................................................................................
750
Section 186.2: Multiple results per group
................................................................................................................ 751
Chapter 187: Similarities in syntax, Di ☐ erences in meaning: Python vs.
JavaScript ............. 752
Section 187.1: `in` with lists
.........................................................................................................................................
752
Chapter 188: Call Python from C#
................................................................................................................... 753
Section 188.1: Python script to be called by C# application
.................................................................................. 753
Section 188.2: C# code calling Python script
.......................................................................................................... 753
Chapter 189: ctypes
................................................................................................................................................
755
Section 189.1: ctypes arrays
.....................................................................................................................................
755
Section 189.2: Wrapping functions for ctypes
........................................................................................................ 755
Section 189.3: Basic usage
........................................................................................................................................
756
Section 189.4: Common pitfalls
................................................................................................................................
756
Section 189.5: Basic ctypes object
...........................................................................................................................
757
Section 189.6: Complex usage
..................................................................................................................................
758
Chapter 190: Writing extensions
........................................................................................................................
760
Section 190.1: Hello World with C Extension
............................................................................................................ 760
Section 190.2: C Extension Using c++ and Boost
.................................................................................................... 760
Section 190.3: Passing an open file to C Extensions
.............................................................................................. 762
Chapter 191: Python Lex-Yacc
.............................................................................................................................
763
Section 191.1: Getting Started with PLY
.................................................................................................................... 763
Section 191.2: The "Hello, World!" of PLY - A Simple Calculator
............................................................................ 763
Section 191.3: Part 1: Tokenizing Input with Lex
....................................................................................................... 765
Section 191.4: Part 2: Parsing Tokenized Input with Yacc
...................................................................................... 768

Chapter 192: Unit Testing

......................................................................................................................................
772
Section 192.1: Test Setup and Teardown within a unittest.TestCase
.................................................................... 772
Section 192.2: Asserting on Exceptions
................................................................................................................... 772
Section 192.3: Testing Exceptions
............................................................................................................................
773
Section 192.4: Choosing Assertions Within Unittests
............................................................................................. 774
Section 192.5: Unit tests with pytest
........................................................................................................................
775
Section 192.6: Mocking functions with unittest.mock.create_autospec
............................................................... 778
Chapter 193: py.test
................................................................................................................................................
780
Section 193.1: Setting up py.test
...............................................................................................................................
780
Section 193.2: Intro to Test Fixtures
.........................................................................................................................
780
Section 193.3: Failing Tests
.......................................................................................................................................
783
Chapter 194: Profiling
.............................................................................................................................................
785
Section 194.1: %%timeit and %timeit in IPython
...................................................................................................... 785
Section 194.2: Using cProfile (Preferred Profiler)
................................................................................................... 785
Section 194.3: timeit() function
.................................................................................................................................
785
Section 194.4: timeit command line
.........................................................................................................................
786
Section 194.5: line_profiler in command line
.......................................................................................................... 786
Chapter 195: Python speed of program
....................................................................................................... 788
Section 195.1: Deque operations
..............................................................................................................................
788
Section 195.2: Algorithmic Notations
.......................................................................................................................
788
Section 195.3: Notation
..............................................................................................................................................
789
Section 195.4: List operations
...................................................................................................................................
790
Section 195.5: Set operations
...................................................................................................................................
790
Chapter 196: Performance optimization
....................................................................................................... 792
Section 196.1: Code profiling
.....................................................................................................................................
792
Chapter 197: Security and Cryptography
.................................................................................................... 794
Section 197.1: Secure Password Hashing
................................................................................................................. 794
Section 197.2: Calculating a Message Digest
......................................................................................................... 794
Section 197.3: Available Hashing Algorithms
.......................................................................................................... 794
Section 197.4: File Hashing
.......................................................................................................................................
795
Section 197.5: Generating RSA signatures using pycrypto
................................................................................... 795
Section 197.6: Asymmetric RSA encryption using pycrypto
................................................................................. 796
Section 197.7: Symmetric encryption using pycrypto
............................................................................................ 797
Chapter 198: Secure Shell Connection in Python
...................................................................................... 798
Section 198.1: ssh connection
...................................................................................................................................
798
Chapter 199: Python Anti-Patterns
.................................................................................................................. 799
Section 199.1: Overzealous except clause
............................................................................................................... 799
Section 199.2: Looking before you leap with processor-intensive function
........................................................ 799
Chapter 200: Common Pitfalls
...........................................................................................................................
802
Section 200.1: List multiplication and common references
.................................................................................. 802
Section 200.2: Mutable default argument
.............................................................................................................. 805
Section 200.3: Changing the sequence you are iterating over
............................................................................ 806
Section 200.4: Integer and String identity
.............................................................................................................. 809
Section 200.5: Dictionaries are unordered
............................................................................................................. 810
Section 200.6: Variable leaking in list comprehensions and for loops
................................................................ 811
Section 200.7: Chaining of or operator
................................................................................................................... 811
Section 200.8: sys.argv[0] is the name of the file being executed
...................................................................... 812
Section 200.9: Accessing int literals' attributes
...................................................................................................... 812
Section 200.10: Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) and blocking threads
................................................................... 813

Section 200.11: Multiple return

..................................................................................................................................
814
Section 200.12: Pythonic JSON keys
.......................................................................................................................
814
Chapter 201: Hidden Features
............................................................................................................................
816
Section 201.1: Operator Overloading
.......................................................................................................................
816
Credits
.................................................................................................................................................
817
You may also like
.................................................................................................................................................
831

Chapter 1: Getting started with Python Language

Python 3.x
Version Release Date
3.8 2020-04-29
3.7 2018-06-27
3.6 2016-12-23
3.5 2015-09-13
3.4 2014-03-17
3.3 2012-09-29
3.2 2011-02-20
3.1 2009-06-26
3.0 2008-12-03
Python 2.x
Version Release Date
2.7 2010-07-03
2.6 2008-10-02
2.5 2006-09-19
2.4 2004-11-30
2.3 2003-07-29
2.2 2001-12-21
2.1 2001-04-15
2.0 2000-10-16

Section 1.1: Getting Started

Python is a widely used high-level programming language for general-

purpose programming, created by Guido van Rossum and first released in
1991. Python features a dynamic type system and automatic memory
management and supports multiple programming paradigms, including
object-oriented, imperative, functional programming, and procedural styles. It
has a large and comprehensive standard library.
Two major versions of Python are currently in active use:

Python 3.x is the current version and is under active development.

Python 2.x is the legacy version and will receive only security updates until
2020. No new features will be implemented. Note that many projects still use
Python 2, although migrating to Python 3 is getting easier.

You can download and install either version of Python here . See Python 3
vs. Python 2 for a comparison between them. In addition, some third-parties
offer re-packaged versions of Python that add commonly used libraries and
other features to ease setup for common use cases, such as math, data
analysis or scientific use. See the list at the official site .

Verify if Python is installed

To confirm that Python was installed correctly, you can verify that by
running the following command in your favorite terminal (If you are using
Windows OS, you need to add path of python to the environment variable
before using it in command prompt):

$ python --version Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

If you have Python 3 installed, and it is your default version (see
Troubleshooting for more details) you should see something like this:
$ python --version Python 3.6.0
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
If you have Python 2 installed, and it is your default version (see
Troubleshooting for more details) you should see something like this:
$ python --version Python 2.7.13

If you have installed Python 3, but $ python --version outputs a Python 2

version, you also have Python 2 installed. This is often the case on MacOS,
and many Linux distributions. Use $ python3 instead to explicitly use the
Python 3 interpreter.

Hello, World in Python using IDLE

IDLE is a simple editor for Python, that comes bundled with Python.
How to create Hello, World program in IDLE
Open IDLE on your system of choice.
In older versions of Windows, it can be found at All Programs under the
Windows menu. In Windows 8+, search for IDLE or find it in the apps that
are present in your system. On Unix-based (including Mac) systems you can
open it from the shell by typing $ idle python_file.py.

It will open a shell with options along the top.

In the shell, there is a prompt of three right angle brackets:
>>>
Now write the following code in the prompt:
>>> print ("Hello, World" )
Hit Enter .
>>> print ("Hello, World" ) Hello, World
Hello World Python file
Create a new file hello.py that contains the following line:

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

print ('Hello, World' ) Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.6

You can use the Python 3 print function in Python 2 with the following
import statement:
from __future__ import print_function
Python 2 has a number of functionalities that can be optionally imported from
Python 3 using the __future__ module, as discussed here.
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
If using Python 2, you may also type the line below. Note that this is not
valid in Python 3 and thus not recommended because it reduces cross-version
code compatibility.
print 'Hello, World'
In your terminal, navigate to the directory containing the file hello.py.
Type python hello.py, then hit the Enter key.
$ python hello.py Hello, World
You should see Hello, World printed to the console.
You can also substitute hello.py with the path to your file. For example, if
you have the file in your home directory and your user is "user" on Linux,
you can type python /home/user /hello.py.
Launch an interactive Python shell
By executing (running) the python command in your terminal, you are
presented with an interactive Python shell. This is also known as the Python
Interpreter or a REPL (for 'Read Evaluate Print Loop').

$ python
Python 2.7.12 (default, Jun 28 2016 , 08 :46 :01 )
[GCC 6.1.1 20160602 ] on linux
Type "help" , "copyright" , "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> print
'Hello, World'
Hello, World
>>>

If you want to run Python 3 from your terminal, execute the command
python3.

$ python3
Python 3.6.0 (default, Jan 13 2017 , 00 :00 :00 )
[GCC 6.1.1 20160602 ] on linux
Type "help" , "copyright" , "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> print
('Hello, World' )
Hello, World
>>>

Alternatively, start the interactive prompt and load file with python -i < file
.py> .
In command line, run:

$ python -i hello.py "Hello World"

>>>

There are multiple ways to close the Python shell:

>>> exit()
or
>>> quit()
Alternatively, CTRL + D will close the shell and put you back on your
terminal's command line.
If you want to cancel a command you're in the middle of typing and get back
to a clean command prompt, while staying inside the Interpreter shell, use
CTRL + C .
Try an interactive Python shell online .
Other Online Shells
Various websites provide online access to Python shells.
Online shells may be useful for the following purposes:

Run a small code snippet from a machine which lacks python

installation(smartphones, tablets etc). Learn or teach basic Python.
Solve online judge problems.

Examples:
Disclaimer: documentation author(s) are not affiliated with any resources
listed below.

https://www.python.org/shell/ - The online Python shell hosted by the official

Python website. https://ideone.com/ - Widely used on the Net to illustrate
code snippet behavior.
https://repl.it/languages/python3 - Powerful and simple online compiler, IDE
and interpreter. Code, compile, and run code in Python.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/execute_python_online.php - Full-featured
UNIX shell, and a user-friendly project explorer.
http://rextester.com/l/python3_online_compiler - Simple and easy to use IDE
which shows execution time

Run commands as a string

Python can be passed arbitrary code as a string in the shell:
$ python -c 'print("Hello, World")' Hello, World
This can be useful when concatenating the results of scripts together in the
shell.
Shells and Beyond

Package Management - The PyPA recommended tool for installing Python

packages is PIP . To install, on your command line execute pip install < the
package name> . For instance, pip install numpy. (Note: On windows you
must add pip to your PATH environment variables. To avoid this, use python
-m pip install < the package name> )

Shells - So far, we have discussed different ways to run code using Python's
native interactive shell. Shells use Python's interpretive power for
experimenting with code real-time. Alternative shells include IDLE - a pre-
bundled GUI, IPython - known for extending the interactive experience, etc.

Programs - For long-term storage you can save content to .py files and
edit/execute them as scripts or programs with external tools e.g. shell, IDEs
(such as PyCharm ), Jupyter notebooks , etc. Intermediate users may use
these tools; however, the methods discussed here are sufficient for getting
started.

Python tutor allows you to step through Python code so you can visualize
how the program will flow, and helps you to understand where your program
went wrong.
PEP8 defines guidelines for formatting Python code. Formatting code well is
important so you can quickly read what the code does.

Section 1.2: Creating variables and assigning values

To create a variable in Python, all you need to do is specify the variable
name, and then assign a value to it.
<variable name > = <value>

Python uses = to assign values to variables. There's no need to declare a

variable in advance (or to assign a data type to it), assigning a value to a
variable itself declares and initializes the variable with that value. There's no
way to declare a variable without assigning it an initial value.

# Integer
a=2
print (a)
# Output: 2

# Integer
b = 9223372036854775807
print (b)
# Output: 9223372036854775807

# Floating point
pi = 3.14
print (pi)
# Output: 3.14

# String
c = 'A'
print (c)
# Output: A

# String
name = 'John Doe'
print (name)
# Output: John Doe

# Boolean
q = True
print (q)
# Output: True

# Empty value or null data type x = None

print (x)
# Output: None

Variable assignment works from left to right. So the following will give you
an syntax error.
0=x
=> Output: SyntaxError : can't assign to literal
You can not use python's keywords as a valid variable name. You can see the
list of keyword by:
import keyword
print (keyword .kwlist)
Rules for variable naming:
1. Variables names must start with a letter or an underscore.
x = True # valid _y = True # valid
9x = False # starts with numeral => SyntaxError : invalid syntax
$y = False # starts with symbol => SyntaxError : invalid syntax
2. The remainder of your variable name may consist of letters, numbers and
underscores.
has_0_in_it = "Still Valid"
3. Names are case sensitive.

x=9
y = X*5
=> NameError : name 'X' is not defined

Even though there's no need to specify a data type when declaring a variable
in Python, while allocating the necessary area in memory for the variable, the
Python interpreter automatically picks the most suitable built-in type for it:

a=2
print (type (a))
# Output: <type 'int'>

b = 9223372036854775807 print (type (b))

# Output: <type 'int'>

pi = 3.14
print (type (pi))
# Output: <type 'float'>

c = 'A'
print (type (c))
# Output: <type 'str'>

name = 'John Doe'

print (type (name))
# Output: <type 'str'>

q = True
print (type (q))
# Output: <type 'bool'>

x = None
print (type (x))
# Output: <type 'NoneType'>
Now you know the basics of assignment, let's get this subtlety about
assignment in python out of the way.
When you use = to do an assignment operation, what's on the left of = is a
name for the object on the right. Finally, what = does is assign the reference
of the object on the right to the name on the left.
That is:
a_name = an_object # "a_name" is now a name for the reference to the object
"an_object"

So, from many assignment examples above, if we pick pi = 3.14 , then pi is a

name (not the name, since an object can have multiple names) for the object
3.14 . If you don't understand something below, come back to this point and
read this again! Also, you can take a look at this for a better understanding.

You can assign multiple values to multiple variables in one line. Note that
there must be the same number of arguments on the right and left sides of the
= operator:

a , b, c = 1 , 2 , 3 print (a, b, c) # Output: 1 2 3

a , b, c = 1 , 2
=> Traceback (most recent call last):
=> File "name.py" , line N, in < module> => a, b, c = 1 , 2
=> ValueError : need more than 2 values to unpack

a,b=1,2,3
=> Traceback (most recent call last): => File "name.py" , line N, in < module>
=> a, b = 1 , 2 , 3
=> ValueError : too many values to unpack

The error in last example can be obviated by assigning remaining values to

equal number of arbitrary variables. This dummy variable can have any
name, but it is conventional to use the underscore (_) for assigning unwanted
values:

a , b, _ = 1 , 2 , 3 print (a, b)
# Output: 1, 2
Note that the number of _ and number of remaining values must be equal.
Otherwise 'too many values to unpack error' is thrown as above:

a , b, _ = 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
=> Traceback (most recent call last):
=> File "name.py" , line N, in < module>
=> a, b, _ = 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
=> ValueError : too many values to unpack (expected 3 )

You can also assign a single value to several variables simultaneously.

a = b = c = 1 print (a, b, c) # Output: 1 1 1

When using such cascading assignment, it is important to note that all three
variables a, b and c refer to the same object in memory, an int object with the
value of 1. In other words, a, b and c are three different names given to the
same int object. Assigning a different object to one of them afterwards
doesn't change the others, just as expected:

a = b = c = 1 # all three names a, b and c refer to same int object with value 1
print (a, b, c)
# Output: 1 1 1
b = 2 # b now refers to another int object, one with a value of 2 print (a, b, c)
# Output: 1 2 1 # so output is as expected.

The above is also true for mutable types (like list , dict , etc.) just as it is true
for immutable types (like int , string , tuple , etc.):

x = y = [7 , 8 , 9 ] # x and y refer to the same list object just created, [7, 8, 9] x

= [13 , 8 , 9 ] # x now refers to a different list object just created, [13, 8, 9] print
(y) # y still refers to the list it was first assigned # Output: [7, 8, 9]

So far so good. Things are a bit different when it comes to modifying the
object (in contrast to assigning the name to a different object, which we did
above) when the cascading assignment is used for mutable types. Take a look
below, and you will see it first hand:

x = y = [7 , 8 , 9 ] # x and y are two different names for the same list object just
created, [7, 8, 9]
x[0 ] = 13 # we are updating the value of the list [7, 8, 9] through one of its
names, x in this case
print (y) # printing the value of the list using its other name
# Output: [13, 8, 9] # hence, naturally the change is reflected

Nested lists are also valid in python. This means that a list can contain
another list as an element.

x = [1 , 2 , [3 , 4 , 5 ], 6 , 7 ] # this is nested list print x[2 ]

# Output: [3, 4, 5]
print x[2 ][1 ]
# Output: 4

Lastly, variables in Python do not have to stay the same type as which they
were first defined -- you can simply use = to assign a new value to a variable,
even if that value is of a different type.

a=2
print (a)
# Output: 2

a = "New value" print (a)

# Output: New value

If this bothers you, think about the fact that what's on the left of = is just a
name for an object. First you call the int object with value 2 a, then you
change your mind and decide to give the name a to a string object, having
value 'New value'. Simple, right?

Section 1.3: Block Indentation

Python uses indentation to define control and loop constructs. This

contributes to Python's readability, however, it requires the programmer to
pay close attention to the use of whitespace. Thus, editor miscalibration could
result in code that behaves in unexpected ways.

Python uses the colon symbol ( :) and indentation for showing where blocks
of code begin and end (If you come from another language, do not confuse
this with somehow being related to the ternary operator ). That is, blocks in
Python, such as functions, loops, if clauses and other constructs, have no
ending identifiers. All blocks start with a colon and then contain the indented
lines below it.

For example:

def my_function(): # This is a function definition. Note the colon (:) a = 2 #

This line belongs to the function because it's indented return a # This line
also belongs to the same function

print (my_function()) # This line is OUTSIDE the function block

or

if a > b: # If block starts here

print (a) # This is part of the if block
else : # else must be at the same level as if print (b) # This line is part of the
else block

Blocks that contain exactly one single-line statement may be put on the same
line, though this form is generally not considered good style:
if a > b: print (a) else : print (b)
Attempting to do this with more than a single statement will not work:
if x > y: y = x
print (y) # IndentationError: unexpected indent
if x > y: while y != z: y = 1 # SyntaxError: invalid syntax
An empty block causes an IndentationError. Use pass (a command that does
nothing) when you have a block with no content:
def will_be_implemented_later(): pass
Spaces vs. Tabs
In short: always use 4 spaces for indentation.
Using tabs exclusively is possible but PEP 8 , the style guide for Python
code, states that spaces are preferred.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
Python 3 disallows mixing the use of tabs and spaces for indentation. In such
case a compile-time error is generated: Inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in
indentation and the program will not run.
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7

Python 2 allows mixing tabs and spaces in indentation; this is strongly

discouraged. The tab character completes the previous indentation to be a
multiple of 8 spaces . Since it is common that editors are configured to show
tabs as multiple of 4 spaces, this can cause subtle bugs.

Citing PEP 8 :

When invoking the Python 2 command line interpreter with the -t option, it
issues warnings about code that illegally mixes tabs and spaces. When using -
tt these warnings become errors. These options are highly recommended!

Many editors have "tabs to spaces" configuration. When configuring the

editor, one should differentiate between the tab character ('\t') and the Tab
key.

The tab character should be configured to show 8 spaces, to match the

language semantics - at least in cases when (accidental) mixed indentation is
possible. Editors can also automatically convert the tab character to spaces.
However, it might be helpful to configure the editor so that pressing the Tab
key will insert 4 spaces, instead of inserting a tab character.

Python source code written with a mix of tabs and spaces, or with non-
standard number of indentation spaces can be made pep8-conformant using
autopep8 . (A less powerful alternative comes with most Python installations:
reindent.py )

Section 1.4: Datatypes

Built-in Types
Booleans
bool : A boolean value of either True or False . Logical operations like and ,
or, not can be performed on booleans.

x or y # if x is False then y otherwise x

x and y # if x is False then x otherwise y
not x # if x is True then False, otherwise True
In Python 2.x and in Python 3.x, a boolean is also an int . The bool type is a
subclass of the int type and True and False are its only instances:
issubclass (bool , int ) # True
isinstance (True , bool ) # True isinstance (False , bool ) # True
If boolean values are used in arithmetic operations, their integer values (1 and
0 for True and False ) will be used to return an integer result:
True + False == 1 # 1 + 0 == 1 True * True == 1 # 1 * 1 == 1
Numbers
int : Integer number

a=2
b = 100
c = 123456789
d = 38563846326424324

Integers in Python are of arbitrary sizes.

Note: in older versions of Python, a long type was available and this was
distinct from int . The two have been unified.
float : Floating point number; precision depends on the implementation and
system architecture, for CPython the float datatype corresponds to a C
double.

a = 2.0
b = 100. e0
c = 123456789. e1

complex : Complex numbers

a = 2 + 1j
b = 100 + 10j
The < , <= , > and >= operators will raise a TypeError exception when any
operand is a complex number.
Strings
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
str : a unicode string . The type of 'hello' bytes : a byte string . The type of
b'hello'
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7

str : a byte string . The type of 'hello' bytes : synonym for str
unicode : a unicode string . The type of u'hello'

Sequences and collections

Python differentiates between ordered sequences and unordered collections
(such as set and dict ).
strings (str , bytes , unicode ) are sequences
reversed : A reversed order of str with reversed function
a = reversed ('hello' )
tuple : An ordered collection of n values of any type (n >= 0 ).

a = (1 , 2 , 3 )
b = ('a' , 1 , 'python' , (1 , 2 ))
b[2 ] = 'something else' # returns a TypeError

Supports indexing; immutable; hashable if all its members are hashable list :
An ordered collection of n values (n >= 0 )

a = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
b = ['a' , 1 , 'python' , (1 , 2 ), [1 , 2 ]] b[2 ] = 'something else' # allowed

Not hashable; mutable.

set : An unordered collection of unique values. Items must be hashable .
a = {1 , 2 , 'a' }
dict : An unordered collection of unique key-value pairs; keys must be
hashable .
a = {1 : 'one' , 2 : 'two' }
b = {'a' : [1 , 2 , 3 ], 'b' : 'a string' }

An object is hashable if it has a hash value which never changes during its
lifetime (it needs a __hash__ () method), and can be compared to other
objects (it needs an __eq__ () method). Hashable objects which compare
equality must have the same hash value.

Built-in constants
In conjunction with the built-in datatypes there are a small number of built-in
constants in the built-in namespace:

True : The true value of the built-in type bool

False : The false value of the built-in type bool
None : A singleton object used to signal that a value is absent.
Ellipsis or ...: used in core Python3+ anywhere and limited usage in
Python2.7+ as part of array notation. numpy and related packages use this as
a 'include everything' reference in arrays.
NotImplemented : a singleton used to indicate to Python that a special
method doesn't support the specific arguments, and Python will try
alternatives if available.

a = None # No value will be assigned. Any valid datatype can be assigned

later Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
None doesn't have any natural ordering. Using ordering comparison operators
(< , <= , >= , > ) isn't supported anymore and will raise a TypeError .
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
None is always less than any number (None < 32 evaluates to True ).
Testing the type of variables
In python, we can check the datatype of an object using the built-in function
type .
a = '123'
print (type (a))

# Out: <class 'str'> b = 123

print (type (b))
# Out: <class 'int'>

In conditional statements it is possible to test the datatype with isinstance .

However, it is usually not encouraged to rely on the type of the variable.
i=7
if isinstance (i, int ): i += 1

elif isinstance (i, str ): i = int (i)

i += 1

For information on the differences between type () and isinstance () read:

Differences between isinstance and type in Python
To test if something is of NoneType:
x = None
if x is None :
print ('Not a surprise, I just defined x as None.' ) Converting between
datatypes
You can perform explicit datatype conversion.
For example, '123' is of str type and it can be converted to integer using int
function.
a = '123' b = int (a)
Converting from a float string such as '123.456' can be done using float
function.

a = '123.456'
b = float (a)
c = int (a) # ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '123.456' d = int
(b) # 123

You can also convert sequence or collection types

a = 'hello'
list (a) # ['h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o'] set (a) # {'o', 'e', 'l', 'h'} tuple (a) # ('h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o')

Explicit string type at definition of literals

With one letter labels just in front of the quotes you can tell what type of
string you want to define.

b 'foo bar' : results bytes in Python 3, str in Python 2

u'foo bar' : results str in Python 3, unicode in Python 2
'foo bar' : results str
r'foo bar' : results so called raw string, where escaping special characters is
not necessary, everything is taken verbatim as you typed

normal = 'foo \n bar' # foo

# bar escaped = 'foo \\ nbar' # foo\nbar raw = r'foo \n bar' # foo\nbar

Mutable and Immutable Data Types

An object is called mutable if it can be changed. For example, when you pass
a list to some function, the list can be changed:
def f(m):
m.append(3 ) # adds a number to the list. This is a mutation.
x = [1 , 2 ]
f(x)
x == [1 , 2 ] # False now, since an item was added to the list

An object is called immutable if it cannot be changed in any way. For

example, integers are immutable, since there's no way to change them:

def bar():
x = (1 , 2 )
g(x)
x == (1 , 2 ) # Will always be True, since no function can change the object (1,
2)

Note that variables themselves are mutable, so we can reassign the variable
x, but this does not change the object that x had previously pointed to. It only
made x point to a new object.
Data types whose instances are mutable are called mutable data types , and
similarly for immutable objects and datatypes.
Examples of immutable Data Types:

int , long , float , complex str

bytes
tuple
frozenset

Examples of mutable Data Types:

bytearray list
set
dict

Section 1.5: Collection Types

There are a number of collection types in Python. While types such as int and
str hold a single value, collection types hold multiple values.
Lists

The list type is probably the most commonly used collection type in Python.
Despite its name, a list is more like an array in other languages, mostly
JavaScript. In Python, a list is merely an ordered collection of valid Python
values. A list can be created by enclosing values, separated by commas, in
square brackets:

int_list = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
string_list = ['abc' , 'defghi' ]
A list can be empty:
empty_list = []
The elements of a list are not restricted to a single data type, which makes
sense given that Python is a dynamic language:
mixed_list = [1 , 'abc' , True , 2.34 , None ]
A list can contain another list as its element:
nested_list = [['a' , 'b' , 'c' ], [1 , 2 , 3 ]]
The elements of a list can be accessed via an index , or numeric
representation of their position. Lists in Python are zero-indexed meaning that
the first element in the list is at index 0, the second element is at index 1 and
so on:

names = ['Alice' , 'Bob' , 'Craig' , 'Diana' , 'Eric' ] print (names[0 ]) # Alice

print (names[2 ]) # Craig

Indices can also be negative which means counting from the end of the list
(-1 being the index of the last element). So, using the list from the above
example:
print (names[1 ]) # Eric print (names[4 ]) # Bob
Lists are mutable, so you can change the values in a list:

names[ 0 ] = 'Ann'
print (names)
# Outputs ['Ann', 'Bob', 'Craig', 'Diana', 'Eric']

Besides, it is possible to add and/or remove elements from a list:

Append object to end of list with L.append(object ), returns None .

names = ['Alice' , 'Bob' , 'Craig' , 'Diana' , 'Eric' ] names.append("Sia" )

print (names)
# Outputs ['Alice', 'Bob', 'Craig', 'Diana', 'Eric', 'Sia']
Add a new element to list at a specific index. L.insert(index, object )

names.insert( 1 , "Nikki" )
print (names)
# Outputs ['Alice', 'Nikki', 'Bob', 'Craig', 'Diana', 'Eric', 'Sia']

Remove the first occurrence of a value with L.remove(value), returns None

names.remove("Bob" )
print (names) # Outputs ['Alice', 'Nikki', 'Craig', 'Diana', 'Eric', 'Sia']
Get the index in the list of the first item whose value is x. It will show an
error if there is no such item.
name.index("Alice" ) 0
Count length of list
len (names) 6
count occurrence of any item in list

a = [1 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] a.count(1 )
3

Reverse the list

a.reverse()
[4 , 3 , 2 , 1 , 1 , 1 ] # or
a[::1 ]
[4 , 3 , 2 , 1 , 1 , 1 ]

Remove and return item at index (defaults to the last item) with
L.pop([index]), returns the item
names.pop() # Outputs 'Sia'
You can iterate over the list elements like below:
for element in my_list: print (element)
Tuples

A tuple is similar to a list except that it is fixed-length and immutable. So the

values in the tuple cannot be changed nor the values be added to or removed
from the tuple. Tuples are commonly used for small collections of values that
will not need to change, such as an IP address and port. Tuples are
represented with parentheses instead of square brackets:
ip_address = ('10.20.30.40' , 8080 )
The same indexing rules for lists also apply to tuples. Tuples can also be
nested and the values can be any valid Python valid.
A tuple with only one member must be defined (note the comma) this way:
one_member_tuple = ('Only member' , )
or
one_member_tuple = 'Only member' , # No brackets
or just using tuple syntax
one_member_tuple = tuple (['Only member' ])
Dictionaries
A dictionary in Python is a collection of key-value pairs. The dictionary is
surrounded by curly braces. Each pair is separated by a comma and the key
and value are separated by a colon. Here is an example:

state_capitals = {
'Arkansas' : 'Little Rock' , 'Colorado' : 'Denver' , 'California' : 'Sacramento' ,
'Georgia' : 'Atlanta'

}
To get a value, refer to it by its key:
ca_capital = state_capitals['California' ]
You can also get all of the keys in a dictionary and then iterate over them:
for k in state_capitals.keys():
print ('{} is the capital of {}' .format(state_capitals[k], k))
Dictionaries strongly resemble JSON syntax. The native json module in the
Python standard library can be used to convert between JSON and
dictionaries.
set

A set is a collection of elements with no repeats and without insertion order

but sorted order. They are used in situations where it is only important that
some things are grouped together, and not what order they were included. For
large groups of data, it is much faster to check whether or not an element is in
a set than it is to do the same for a list .

Defining a set is very similar to defining a dictionary:

first_names = {'Adam' , 'Beth' , 'Charlie' }
Or you can build a set using an existing list :
my_list = [1 , 2 , 3 ] my_set = set (my_list)
Check membership of the set using in:
if name in first_names: print (name)
You can iterate over a set exactly like a list, but remember: the values will be
in an arbitrary, implementationdefined order.
defaultdict

A defaultdict is a dictionary with a default value for keys, so that keys for
which no value has been explicitly defined can be accessed without errors.
defaultdict is especially useful when the values in the dictionary are
collections (lists, dicts, etc) in the sense that it does not need to be initialized
every time when a new key is used. A defaultdict will never raise a KeyError.
Any key that does not exist gets the default value returned.

For example, consider the following dictionary

>>> state_capitals = {
'Arkansas' : 'Little Rock' , 'Colorado' : 'Denver' , 'California' : 'Sacramento' ,
'Georgia' : 'Atlanta'

}
If we try to access a non-existent key, python returns us an error as follows
>>> state_capitals['Alabama' ] Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<ipython-input-61-236329695e6f>" , line 1 , in < module>
state_capitals['Alabama' ]
KeyError : 'Alabama'
Let us try with a defaultdict. It can be found in the collections module.
>>> from collections import defaultdict
>>> state_capitals = defaultdict(lambda : 'Boston' )
What we did here is to set a default value (Boston ) in case the give key does
not exist. Now populate the dict as before:

>>> state_capitals['Arkansas' ] = 'Little Rock' >>> state_capitals['California' ]

= 'Sacramento' >>> state_capitals['Colorado' ] = 'Denver' >>>
state_capitals['Georgia' ] = 'Atlanta'

If we try to access the dict with a non-existent key, python will return us the
default value i.e. Boston
>>> state_capitals['Alabama' ] 'Boston'
and returns the created values for existing key just like a normal dictionary
>>> state_capitals['Arkansas' ] 'Little Rock'

Section 1.6: IDLE - Python GUI

IDLE is Python ’s Integrated Development and Learning Environment and is

an alternative to the command line. As the name may imply, IDLE is very
useful for developing new code or learning python. On Windows this comes
with the Python interpreter, but in other operating systems you may need to
install it through your package manager.

The main purposes of IDLE are:

Multi-window text editor with syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and

smart indent
Python shell with syntax highlighting
Integrated debugger with stepping, persistent breakpoints, and call stack
visibility
Automatic indentation (useful for beginners learning about Python's
indentation)
Saving the Python program as .py files and run them and edit them later at
any them using IDLE.

In IDLE, hit F5 or run Python Shell to launch an interpreter. Using IDLE can
be a better learning experience for new users because code is interpreted as
the user writes.
Note that there are lots of alternatives, see for example this discussion or this
list .
Troubleshooting
Windows

If you're on Windows, the default command is python. If you receive a

"'python' is not recognized" error, the most likely cause is that Python's
location is not in your system's PATH environment variable. This can be
accessed by right-clicking on 'My Computer' and selecting 'Properties' or by
navigating to 'System' through 'Control Panel'. Click on 'Advanced system
settings' and then 'Environment Variables...'. Edit the PATH variable to
include the directory of your Python installation, as well as the Script folder
(usually
C:\Python27; C:\Python27\Scripts). This requires administrative privileges
and may require a restart.

When using multiple versions of Python on the same machine, a possible

solution is to rename one of the python.exe files. For example, naming one
version python27.exe would cause python27 to become the Python command
for that version.

You can also use the Python Launcher for Windows, which is available
through the installer and comes by default. It allows you to select the version
of Python to run by using py -[x.y] instead of python[x.y]. You can use the
latest version of Python 2 by running scripts with py 2 and the latest version
of Python 3 by running scripts with py 3 .

Debian/Ubuntu/MacOS
This section assumes that the location of the python executable has been
added to the PATH environment variable.
If you're on Debian/Ubuntu/MacOS, open the terminal and type python for
Python 2.x or python3 for Python 3.x.
Type which python to see which Python interpreter will be used.
Arch Linux
The default Python on Arch Linux (and descendants) is Python 3, so use
python or python3 for Python 3.x and python2 for Python 2.x.
Other systems
Python 3 is sometimes bound to python instead of python3. To use Python 2
on these systems where it is installed, you can use python2.

Section 1.7: User Input

Interactive input
To get input from the user, use the input function (note : in Python 2.x, the
function is called raw_input instead, although Python 2.x has its own version
of input that is completely different):
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
name = raw_input ("What is your name? " )
# Out: What is your name? _

Security Remark Do not use input () in Python2 - the entered text will be
evaluated as if it were a Python expression (equivalent to eval (input ()) in
Python3), which might easily become a vulnerability. See this article for
further information on the risks of using this function.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

name = input ("What is your name? " ) # Out: What is your name? _

The remainder of this example will be using Python 3 syntax.

The function takes a string argument, which displays it as a prompt and
returns a string. The above code provides a prompt, waiting for the user to
input.
name = input ("What is your name? " ) # Out: What is your name?
If the user types "Bob" and hits enter, the variable name will be assigned to
the string "Bob" :

name = input ("What is your name? " ) # Out: What is your name? Bob print
(name)
# Out: Bob

Note that the input is always of type str , which is important if you want the
user to enter numbers. Therefore, you need to convert the str before trying to
use it as a number:

x = input ("Write a number:" )

# Out: Write a number: 10
x/2
# Out: TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'str' and 'int' float (x) /
2
# Out: 5.0

NB: It's recommended to use try /except blocks to catch exceptions when
dealing with user inputs. For instance, if your code wants to cast a raw_input
into an int , and what the user writes is uncastable, it raises a ValueError .
Section 1.8: Built in Modules and Functions

A module is a file containing Python definitions and statements. Function is a

piece of code which execute some logic.
>>> pow (2 , 3 ) #8

To check the built in function in python we can use dir (). If called without an
argument, return the names in the current scope. Else, return an alphabetized
list of names comprising (some of) the attribute of the given object, and of
attributes reachable from it.

>>> dir (__builtins__) [

'ArithmeticError' ,
'AssertionError' ,
'AttributeError' ,
'BaseException' ,
'BufferError' ,
'BytesWarning' ,
'DeprecationWarning' ,
'EOFError' ,
'Ellipsis' ,
'EnvironmentError' ,
'Exception' ,
'False' ,
'FloatingPointError' ,
'FutureWarning' ,
'GeneratorExit' ,
'IOError' ,
'ImportError' ,
'ImportWarning' ,
'IndentationError' ,
'IndexError' ,
'KeyError' ,
'KeyboardInterrupt' ,
'LookupError' ,
'MemoryError' ,
'NameError' ,
'None' ,
'NotImplemented' ,
'NotImplementedError' ,
'OSError' ,
'OverflowError' ,
'PendingDeprecationWarning' , 'ReferenceError' ,
'RuntimeError' ,
'RuntimeWarning' ,
'StandardError' ,
'StopIteration' ,
'SyntaxError' ,
'SyntaxWarning' ,
'SystemError' ,
'SystemExit' ,
'TabError' ,
'True' ,
'TypeError' ,
'UnboundLocalError' ,
'UnicodeDecodeError' ,
'UnicodeEncodeError' ,
'UnicodeError' ,
'UnicodeTranslateError' , 'UnicodeWarning' ,
'UserWarning' ,
'ValueError' ,
'Warning' ,
'ZeroDivisionError' ,
'__debug__' ,
'__doc__' ,
'__import__' , '__name__' ,
'__package__' , 'abs' ,
'all' ,
'any' ,
'apply' ,
'basestring' , 'bin' ,
'bool' ,
'buffer' ,
'bytearray' , 'bytes' ,
'callable' ,
'chr' ,
'classmethod' , 'cmp' ,
'coerce' ,
'compile' ,
'complex' ,
'copyright' , 'credits' ,
'delattr' ,
'dict' ,
'dir' ,
'divmod' ,
'enumerate' , 'eval' ,
'execfile' ,
'exit' ,
'file' ,
'filter' ,
'float' ,
'format' ,
'frozenset' , 'getattr' ,
'globals' ,
'hasattr' ,
'hash' ,
'help' ,
'hex' ,
'id' ,
'input' ,
'int' ,
'intern' ,
'isinstance' , 'issubclass' , 'iter' ,
'len' ,
'license' ,
'list' ,
'locals' ,
'long' ,
'map' ,
'max' ,
'memoryview' , 'min' ,
'next' ,
'object' ,
'oct' ,
'open' ,
'ord' ,
'pow' ,
'print' ,
'property' ,
'quit' ,
'range' ,
'raw_input' , 'reduce' ,
'reload' ,
'repr' ,
'reversed' ,
'round' ,
'set' ,
'setattr' ,
'slice' ,
'sorted' ,
'staticmethod' , 'str' ,
'sum' ,
'super' ,
'tuple' ,
'type' ,
'unichr' ,
'unicode' ,
'vars' ,
'xrange' ,
'zip'
]
To know the functionality of any function, we can use built in function help .

>>> help (max )

Help on builtin function max in module __builtin__ : max (...)

max (iterable[, key= func]) > value

max (a, b, c, ...[, key= func]) > value
With a single iterable argument, return its largest item. With two or more
arguments, return the largest argument.

Built in modules contains extra functionalities. For example to get square

root of a number we need to include math module.
>>> import math
>>> math .sqrt(16 ) # 4.0
To know all the functions in a module we can assign the functions list to a
variable, and then print the variable.
>>> import math >>> dir (math )

[ '__doc__' , '__name__' , '__package__' , 'acos' , 'acosh' , 'asin' , 'asinh' , 'atan'

'atanh' , 'ceil' , 'copysign' , 'cos' , 'cosh' , 'degrees' , 'e' , 'erf' , 'erfc' , 'exp' , 'expm1'
'factorial' , 'floor' , 'fmod' , 'frexp' , 'fsum' , 'gamma' , 'hypot' , 'isinf' , 'isnan' , 'ldexp'
'lgamma' , 'log' , 'log10' , 'log1p' , 'modf' , 'pi' , 'pow' , 'radians' , 'sin' , 'sinh' , 'sqrt'
'tanh' , 'trunc' ]

it seems __doc__ is useful to provide some documentation in, say, functions

>>> math .__doc__
'This module is always available. It provides access to the \n mathematical
functions defined by the C standard.'
In addition to functions, documentation can also be provided in modules. So,
if you have a file named helloWorld.py like this:
"""This is the module docstring."""

def sayHello():
"""This is the function docstring.""" return 'Hello World'

You can access its docstrings like this:

>>> import helloWorld

>>> helloWorld.__doc__
'This is the module docstring.' >>> helloWorld.sayHello.__doc__ 'This is the
function docstring.'

For any user defined type, its attributes, its class's attributes, and recursively
the attributes of its class's base classes can be retrieved using dir()
>>> class MyClassObject(object ):
... pass
...
>>> dir (MyClassObject)
['__class__' , '__delattr__' , '__dict__' , '__doc__' , '__format__' , '__getattribute__'
'__hash__' , '__init__' , '__module__' , '__new__' , '__reduce__' , '__reduce_ex__'
'__repr__' , '__setattr__' , '__sizeof__' , '__str__' , '__subclasshook__' ,
'__weakref__' ]

Any data type can be simply converted to string using a builtin function
called str . This function is called by default when a data type is passed to
print
>>> str (123 ) # "123"

Section 1.9: Creating a module

A module is an importable file containing definitions and statements.
A module can be created by creating a .py file.
# hello.py
def say_hello():
print ("Hello!" )
Functions in a module can be used by importing the module.

For modules that you have made, they will need to be in the same directory
as the file that you are importing them into. (However, you can also put them
into the Python lib directory with the pre-included modules, but should be
avoided if possible.)

$ python
>>> import hello
>>> hello.say_hello()

=> "Hello!"
Modules can be imported by other modules.

# greet.py
import hello
hello.say_hello()
Specific functions of a module can be imported.

# greet.py
from hello import say_hello say_hello()

Modules can be aliased.

# greet.py
import hello as ai ai.say_hello()

A module can be stand-alone runnable script.

# run_hello.py
if __name__ == '__main__' : from hello import say_hello
say_hello()

Run it!
$ python run_hello.py => "Hello!"
If the module is inside a directory and needs to be detected by python, the
directory should contain a file named __init__ .py.

Section 1.10: Installation of Python 2.7.x and 3.x

Note : Following instructions are written for Python 2.7 (unless specified):
instructions for Python 3.x are similar.
Windows
First, download the latest version of Python 2.7 from the official Website
(https://www.python.org/downloads/) . Version is provided as an MSI
package. To install it manually, just double-click the file.
By default, Python installs to a directory:
C:\Python27\
Warning: installation does not automatically modify the PATH environment
variable.
Assuming that your Python installation is in C:\Python27, add this to your
PATH:
C:\Python27\; C:\Python27\Scripts\
Now to check if Python installation is valid write in cmd:
python --version
Python 2.x and 3.x Side-By-Side
To install and use both Python 2.x and 3.x side-by-side on a Windows
machine:
1. Install Python 2.x using the MSI installer.
Ensure Python is installed for all users.
Optional: add Python to PATH to make Python 2.x callable from the
command-line using python.
2. Install Python 3.x using its respective installer.

Again, ensure Python is installed for all users.

Optional: add Python to PATH to make Python 3.x callable from the
command-line using python. This may override Python 2.x PATH settings, so
double-check your PATH and ensure it's configured to your preferences.
Make sure to install the py launcher for all users.

Python 3 will install the Python launcher which can be used to launch Python
2.x and Python 3.x interchangeably from the command-line:

P:\ > py 3
Python 3.6.1 (v3.6.1:69c0db5, Mar 21 2017 , 17 :54 :52 ) [MSC v.1900 32 bit
(Intel)] on win32 Type "help" , "copyright" , "credits" or "license" for more
information.
>>>

C:\ > py 2
Python 2.7.13 (v2.7.13:a06454b1afa1, Dec 17 2016 , 20 :42 :59 ) [MSC
v.1500 32 Intel)] on win32 Type "help" , "copyright" , "credits" or "license" for
more information.
>>>

To use the corresponding version of pip for a specific Python version, use:
C:\> py 3 -m pip -V
pip 9.0.1 from C:\Python36\lib\site-packages (python 3.6 )
C:\> py 2 -m pip -V
pip 9.0.1 from C:\Python27\lib\site-packages (python 2.7 )
Linux
The latest versions of CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise (RHEL) and
Ubuntu come with Python 2.7.
To install Python 2.7 on linux manually, just do the following in terminal:

wget --no-check-certificate https:// www.python.org/ ftp/ python/ 2.7.X/

Python-2.7.X.tgz tar -xzf Python-2.7.X.tgz
cd Python-2.7.X
./ configure
make
sudo make install

Also add the path of new python in PATH environment variable. If new
python is in /root/python2.7 .X then run export PATH =
$PATH:/root/python2.7 .X
Now to check if Python installation is valid write in terminal:
python --version
Ubuntu (From Source)
If you need Python 3.6 you can install it from source as shown below
(Ubuntu 16.10 and 17.04 have 3.6 version in the universal repository). Below
steps have to be followed for Ubuntu 16.04 and lower versions:

sudo apt install build-essential checkinstall

sudo apt install libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-
dev tk-dev libgdbmdev libc6-dev libbz2-dev
wget https:// www.python.org/ ftp/ python/ 3.6.1/ Python-3.6.1.tar.xz
tar xvf Python-3.6.1.tar.xz
cd Python-3.6.1/
./ configure --enable-optimizations
sudo make altinstall

macOS
As we speak, macOS comes installed with Python 2.7.10, but this version is
outdated and slightly modified from the regular Python.

The version of Python that ships with OS X is great for learning but it ’s not
good for development. The version shipped with OS X may be out of date
from the official current Python release, which is considered the stable
production version. (source )

Install Homebrew :
/ usr/ bin/ ruby - e "$(curl -fsSL
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Install Python 2.7:
brew install python For Python 3.x, use the command brew install python3
instead.

Section 1.11: String function - str() and repr()

There are two functions that can be used to obtain a readable representation
of an object.
repr (x) calls x.__repr__ (): a representation of x. eval will usually convert the
result of this function back to the original object.
str (x) calls x.__str__ (): a human-readable string that describes the object.
This may elide some technical detail.
repr()

For many types, this function makes an attempt to return a string that would
yield an object with the same value when passed to eval (). Otherwise, the
representation is a string enclosed in angle brackets that contains the name of
the type of the object along with additional information. This often includes
the name and address of the object.

str()

For strings, this returns the string itself. The difference between this and repr
(object ) is that str (object ) does not always attempt to return a string that is
acceptable to eval (). Rather, its goal is to return a printable or 'human
readable' string. If no argument is given, this returns the empty string, ''.

Example 1:

s = """w'o"w"""
repr (s) # Output: '\'w\\\'o"w\'' str (s) # Output: 'w\'o"w'
eval (str (s)) == s # Gives a SyntaxError eval (repr (s)) == s # Output: True

Example 2:

import datetime
today = datetime .datetime .now()
str (today) # Output: '2016-09-15 06:58:46.915000'
repr (today) # Output: 'datetime.datetime(2016, 9, 15, 6, 58, 46, 915000)'

When writing a class, you can override these methods to do whatever you
want:
class Represent(object ):
def __init__ (self , x, y): self .x, self .y = x, y
def __repr__ (self ):
return "Represent(x={},y= \" {} \" )" .format(self .x, self .y)
def __str__ (self ):
return "Representing x as {} and y as {}" .format(self .x, self .y)
Using the above class we can see the results:

r = Represent(1 , "Hopper" )
print (r) # prints __str__
print (r.__repr__ ) # prints __repr__: '<bound method Represent.__repr__
of Represent(x=1,y="Hopper")>'
rep = r.__repr__ () # sets the execution of __repr__ to a new variable print
(rep) # prints 'Represent(x=1,y="Hopper")'
r2 = eval (rep) # evaluates rep
print (r2) # prints __str__ from new object
print (r2 == r) # prints 'False' because they are different objects

Section 1.12: Installing external modules using pip

pip is your friend when you need to install any package from the plethora of
choices available at the python package index (PyPI). pip is already installed
if you're using Python 2 >= 2.7.9 or Python 3 >= 3.4 downloaded from
python.org. For computers running Linux or another *nix with a native
package manager, pip must often be manually installed.

On instances with both Python 2 and Python 3 installed, pip often refers to
Python 2 and pip3 to Python 3. Using pip will only install packages for
Python 2 and pip3 will only install packages for Python 3.
Finding / installing a package
Searching for a package is as simple as typing
$ pip search < query>
# Searches for packages whose name or summary contains <query>
Installing a package is as simple as typing (in a terminal / command-prompt,
not in the Python interpreter)
$ pip install [package_name] # latest version of the package
$ pip install [package_name]== x.x.x # specific version of the package
$ pip install '[package_name]>=x.x.x' # minimum version of the package
where x.x.x is the version number of the package you want to install.
When your server is behind proxy, you can install package by using below
command:
$ pip --proxy http://< server address> :< port> install Upgrading installed
packages
When new versions of installed packages appear they are not automatically
installed to your system. To get an overview of which of your installed
packages have become outdated, run:
$ pip list --outdated
To upgrade a specific package use
$ pip install [package_name] --upgrade
Updating all outdated packages is not a standard functionality of pip.
Upgrading pip
You can upgrade your existing pip installation by using the following
commands
On Linux or macOS X:
$ pip install -U pip
You may need to use sudo with pip on some Linux Systems
On Windows:
py -m pip install -U pip
or
python -m pip install -U pip For more information regarding pip do read here
.

Section 1.13: Help Utility

Python has several functions built into the interpreter. If you want to get
information of keywords, built-in functions, modules or topics open a Python
console and enter:
>>> help ()
You will receive information by entering keywords directly:
>>> help (help )
or within the utility:
help> help
which will show an explanation:
Help on _Helper in module _sitebuiltins object:

class _Helper(builtins.object)
| Define the builtin 'help'.
|
| This is a wrapper around pydoc.help that provides a helpful message | when
'help' is typed at the Python interactive prompt.
|
| Calling help() at the Python prompt starts an interactive help session. |
Calling help(thing) prints help for the python object 'thing'. |
| Methods defined here:
|
| __call__(self, *args, **kwds)
|
| __repr__(self)
|
| ---------------------------------------------------------------------| Data descriptors
defined here:
|
| __dict__
| dictionary for instance variables (if defined)
|
| __weakref__
| list of weak references to the object (if defined)

You can also request subclasses of modules:

help (pymysql.connections)
You can use help to access the docstrings of the different modules you have
imported, e.g., try the following:
>>> help (math )
and you'll get an error
>>> import math
>>> help (math )
And now you will get a list of the available methods in the module, but only
AFTER you have imported it. Close the helper with quit

Chapter 2: Python Data Types

Data types are nothing but variables you use to reserve some space in
memory. Python variables do not need an explicit declaration to reserve
memory space. The declaration happens automatically when you assign a
value to a variable.

Section 2.1: String Data Type

String are identified as a contiguous set of characters represented in the

quotation marks. Python allows for either pairs of single or double quotes.
Strings are immutable sequence data type, i.e each time one makes any
changes to a string, completely new string object is created.

a_str = 'Hello World'

print (a_str) #output will be whole string. Hello World
print (a_str[0 ]) #output will be first character. H
print (a_str[0 :5 ]) #output will be first five characters. Hello

Section 2.2: Set Data Types

Sets are unordered collections of unique objects, there are two types of set:
1. Sets - They are mutable and new elements can be added once sets are
defined

basket = {'apple' , 'orange' , 'apple' , 'pear' , 'orange' , 'banana' } print (basket) #

duplicates will be removed > {'orange' , 'banana' , 'pear' , 'apple' }
a = set ('abracadabra' )
print (a) # unique letters in a
> {'a' , 'r' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' }
a.add('z' )
print (a)
> {'a' , 'c' , 'r' , 'b' , 'z' , 'd' }

2. Frozen Sets - They are immutable and new elements cannot added after its
defined.

b = frozenset ('asdfagsa' )
print (b)
> frozenset ({'f' , 'g' , 'd' , 'a' , 's' })
cities = frozenset (["Frankfurt" , "Basel" , "Freiburg" ]) print (cities)
> frozenset ({'Frankfurt' , 'Basel' , 'Freiburg' })

Section 2.3: Numbers data type

Numbers have four types in Python. Int, float, complex, and long.

int_num = 10 #int value

float_num = 10.2 #float value
complex_num = 3.14j #complex value
long_num = 1234567L #long value

Section 2.4: List Data Type

A list contains items separated by commas and enclosed within square
brackets [].lists are almost similar to arrays in C. One difference is that all the
items belonging to a list can be of different data type.

list = [123 , 'abcd' , 10.2 , 'd' ] #can be an array of any data type or single data
type. list1 = ['hello' , 'world' ]
print (list ) #will output whole list. [123,'abcd',10.2,'d']
print (list [0 :2 ]) #will output first two element of list. [123,'abcd'] print
(list1 * 2 ) #will gave list1 two times. ['hello','world','hello','world'] print (list
+ list1) #will gave concatenation of both the lists.
[123,'abcd',10.2,'d','hello','world']

Section 2.5: Dictionary Data Type

Dictionary consists of key-value pairs. It is enclosed by curly braces {} and
values can be assigned and accessed using square brackets[].

dic = {'name' :'red' , 'age' :10 }

print (dic) #will output all the key-value pairs. {'name':'red','age':10} print
(dic['name' ]) print (dic.values()) print (dic.keys())

#will output only value with 'name' key. 'red' #will output list of values in dic.
['red',10] #will output list of keys. ['name','age']

Section 2.6: Tuple Data Type

Lists are enclosed in brackets [ ] and their elements and size can be changed,
while tuples are enclosed in parentheses ( ) and cannot be updated. Tuples are
immutable.

tuple = (123 , 'hello' )

tuple1 = ('world' )
print (tuple ) #will output whole tuple. (123,'hello')
print (tuple [0 ]) #will output first value. (123)
print (tuple + tuple1) #will output (123,'hello','world')
tuple [1 ]= 'update' #this will give you error.

Chapter 3: Indentation
Section 3.1: Simple example

For Python, Guido van Rossum based the grouping of statements on

indentation. The reasons for this are explained in the first section of the
"Design and History Python FAQ" . Colons, :, are used to declare an indented
code block , such as the following example:

class ExampleClass:
#Every function belonging to a class must be indented equally
def __init__ (self ):

name = "example"
def someFunction(self , a):
#Notice everything belonging to a function must be indented
if a > 5 :

return True
else :
return False

#If a function is not indented to the same level it will not be considers as part
of the parent class def separateFunction(b):
for i in b:
#Loops are also indented and nested conditions start a new indentation
if i == 1 :
return True
return False

separateFunction([2 , 3 , 5 , 6 , 1 ])
Spaces or Tabs?
The recommended indentation is 4 spaces but tabs or spaces can be used so
long as they are consistent. Do not mix tabs and spaces in Python as this will
cause an error in Python 3 and can causes errors in Python 2 .

Section 3.2: How Indentation is Parsed

Whitespace is handled by the lexical analyzer before being parsed.

The lexical analyzer uses a stack to store indentation levels. At the beginning,
the stack contains just the value 0, which is the leftmost position. Whenever a
nested block begins, the new indentation level is pushed on the stack, and an
"INDENT" token is inserted into the token stream which is passed to the
parser. There can never be more than one "INDENT" token in a row
(IndentationError).

When a line is encountered with a smaller indentation level, values are

popped from the stack until a value is on top which is equal to the new
indentation level (if none is found, a syntax error occurs). For each value
popped, a "DEDENT" token is generated. Obviously, there can be multiple
"DEDENT" tokens in a row.
The lexical analyzer skips empty lines (those containing only whitespace and
possibly comments), and will never generate either "INDENT" or
"DEDENT" tokens for them.
At the end of the source code, "DEDENT" tokens are generated for each
indentation level left on the stack, until just the 0 is left.
For example:
if foo:
if bar:
x = 42 else :
print foo
is analyzed as:

<if> <foo> <:> [0] <INDENT> <if> <bar> <:> [0, 4] <INDENT> <x> <= >
<42 > [0, 4, 8] <DEDENT> <DEDENT> <else> <:> [0] <INDENT>
<print> <foo> [0, 2] <DEDENT>

The parser than handles the "INDENT" and "DEDENT" tokens as block
delimiters.

Section 3.3: Indentation Errors

The spacing should be even and uniform throughout. Improper indentation
can cause an IndentationError or cause the program to do something
unexpected. The following example raises an IndentationError:
a=7
if a > 5 :
print "foo"
else :
print "bar"
print "done"
Or if the line following a colon is not indented, an IndentationError will also
be raised:
if True :
print "true"
If you add indentation where it doesn't belong, an IndentationError will be
raised:
if True :
a=6
b = 5 If you forget to un-indent functionality could be lost. In this example
None is returned instead of the expected False :

def isEven(a):
if a%2 == 0 :
return True
#this next line should be even with the if return False

print isEven(7 )

Chapter 4: Comments and Documentation

Section 4.1: Single line, inline and multiline comments

Comments are used to explain code when the basic code itself isn't clear.
Python ignores comments, and so will not execute code in there, or raise
syntax errors for plain English sentences.
Single-line comments begin with the hash character (#) and are terminated by
the end of line.
Single line comment:
# This is a single line comment in Python
Inline comment:
print ("Hello World" ) # This line prints "Hello World"
Comments spanning multiple lines have """ or ''' on either end. This is the
same as a multiline string, but they can be used as comments:

"""
This type of comment spans multiple lines.
These are mostly used for documentation of functions, classes and modules.
"""

Section 4.2: Programmatically accessing docstrings

Docstrings are - unlike regular comments - stored as an attribute of the

function they document, meaning that you can access them
programmatically.
An example function

def func():
"""This is a function that does nothing at all"""
return

The docstring can be accessed using the __doc__ attribute:

print (func.__doc__)
This is a function that does nothing at all
help (func)
Help on function func in module __main__ :
func()
This is a function that does nothing at all
Another example function
function.__doc__ is just the actual docstring as a string, while the help
function provides general information about a function, including the
docstring. Here's a more helpful example:
def greet(name, greeting= "Hello" ): """Print a greeting to the user `name`
Optional parameter `greeting` can change what they're greeted with."""
print ("{} {}" .format(greeting, name))
help (greet)
Help on function greet in module __main__ :
greet(name, greeting= 'Hello' )
Print a greeting to the user name
Optional parameter greeting can change what they're greeted with.
Advantages of docstrings over regular comments
Just putting no docstring or a regular comment in a function makes it a lot
less helpful.

def greet(name, greeting= "Hello" ):

# Print a greeting to the user `name`
# Optional parameter `greeting` can change what they're greeted with.

print ("{} {}" .format(greeting, name))

print (greet.__doc__)
None
help (greet)
Help on function greet in module main : greet(name, greeting= 'Hello' )
Section 4.3: Write documentation using docstrings

A docstring is a multi-line comment used to document modules, classes,

functions and methods. It has to be the first statement of the component it
describes.
def hello(name):
"""Greet someone.
Print a greeting ("Hello") for the person with the given name. """
print ("Hello " +name)

class Greeter:
"""An object used to greet people. It contains multiple greeting functions for
several languages and times of the day.
"""

The value of the docstring can be accessed within the program and is - for
example - used by the help command.
Syntax conventions PEP 257
PEP 257 defines a syntax standard for docstring comments. It basically
allows two types:
One-line Docstrings:
According to PEP 257, they should be used with short and simple functions.
Everything is placed in one line, e.g:

def hello():
"""Say hello to your friends.""" print ("Hello my friends!" )

The docstring shall end with a period, the verb should be in the imperative
form.
Multi-line Docstrings:
Multi-line docstring should be used for longer, more complex functions,
modules or classes.
def hello(name, language= "en" ): """Say hello to a person.

Arguments:
name: the name of the person
language: the language in which the person should be greeted """
print (greeting[language]+" " +name)
They start with a short summary (equivalent to the content of a one-line
docstring) which can be on the same line as the quotation marks or on the
next line, give additional detail and list parameters and return values.

Note PEP 257 defines what information should be given within a docstring, it
doesn't define in which format it should be given. This was the reason for
other parties and documentation parsing tools to specify their own standards
for documentation, some of which are listed below and in this question .

Sphinx

Sphinx is a tool to generate HTML based documentation for Python projects

based on docstrings. Its markup language used is reStructuredText . They
define their own standards for documentation, pythonhosted.org hosts a very
good description of them . The Sphinx format is for example used by the
pyCharm IDE .

A function would be documented like this using the Sphinx/reStructuredText

format:
def hello(name, language= "en" ): """Say hello to a person.

:param name: the name of the person

:type name: str
:param language: the language in which the person should be greeted :type
language: str
:return: a number :rtype: int
"""

print (greeting[language]+" " +name) return 4

Google Python Style Guide

Google has published Google Python Style Guide which defines coding
conventions for Python, including documentation comments. In comparison
to the Sphinx/reST many people say that documentation according to
Google's guidelines is better human-readable.

The pythonhosted.org page mentioned above also provides some examples

for good documentation according to the Google Style Guide.
Using the Napoleon plugin, Sphinx can also parse documentation in the
Google Style Guide-compliant format.
A function would be documented like this using the Google Style Guide
format:
def hello(name, language= "en" ): """Say hello to a person.

Args:
name: the name of the person as string language: the language code string

Returns:
A number.
"""

print (greeting[language]+" " +name) return 4

Chapter 5: Date and Time

Section 5.1: Parsing a string into a timezone aware datetime
object

Python 3.2+ has support for %z format when parsing a string into a datetime
object.
UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM (empty string if the object is
naive).

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.2

import datetime
dt = datetime .datetime .strptime("2016-04-15T08:27:18-0500" , "%Y-%m-
%dT%H:%M:%S%z" )

For other versions of Python, you can use an external library such as dateutil ,
which makes parsing a string with timezone into a datetime object is quick.
import dateutil.parser
dt = dateutil.parser .parse("2016-04-15T08:27:18-0500" )
The dt variable is now a datetime object with the following value: datetime
.datetime (2016 , 4 , 15 , 8 , 27 , 18 , tzinfo= tzoffset(None , 18000 ))
Section 5.2: Constructing timezone-aware datetimes

By default all datetime objects are naive. To make them timezone-aware, you
must attach a tzinfo object, which provides the UTC offset and timezone
abbreviation as a function of date and time.
Fixed Offset Time Zones
For time zones that are a fixed offset from UTC, in Python 3.2+, the datetime
module provides the timezone class, a concrete implementation of tzinfo,
which takes a timedelta and an (optional) name parameter:
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.2
from datetime import datetime , timedelta, timezone
JST = timezone(timedelta(hours= +9 ))

dt = datetime (2015 , 1 , 1 , 12 , 0 , 0 , tzinfo= JST)

print (dt)
# 2015-01-01 12:00:00+09:00

print (dt.tzname())
# UTC+09:00

dt = datetime (2015 , 1 , 1 , 12 , 0 , 0 , tzinfo= timezone(timedelta(hours= 9 ), 'JST'

print (dt.tzname)
# 'JST'

For Python versions before 3.2, it is necessary to use a third party library,
such as dateutil . dateutil provides an equivalent class, tzoffset, which (as of
version 2.5.3) takes arguments of the form dateutil.tz.tzoffset(tzname, offset),
where offset is specified in seconds:

Python 3.x Version < 3.2

Python 2.xVersion < 2.7

from datetime import datetime , timedelta from dateutil import tz

JST = tz.tzoffset('JST' , 9 * 3600 ) # 3600 seconds per hour dt = datetime (2015

, 1 , 1 , 12 , 0 , tzinfo= JST)
print (dt)
# 2015-01-01 12:00:00+09:00
print (dt.tzname)
# 'JST'

Zones with daylight savings time

For zones with daylight savings time, python standard libraries do not
provide a standard class, so it is necessary to use a third party library. pytz
and dateutil are popular libraries providing time zone classes.

In addition to static time zones, dateutil provides time zone classes that use
daylight savings time (see the documentation for the tz module ). You can
use the tz.gettz() method to get a time zone object, which can then be passed
directly to the datetime constructor:

from datetime import datetime

from dateutil import tz
local = tz.gettz() # Local time
PT = tz.gettz('US/Pacific' ) # Pacific time

dt_l = datetime (2015 , 1 , 1 , 12 , tzinfo= local) # I am in EST

dt_pst = datetime (2015 , 1 , 1 , 12 , tzinfo= PT)
dt_pdt = datetime (2015 , 7 , 1 , 12 , tzinfo= PT) # DST is handled automatically
print (dt_l)
# 2015-01-01 12:00:00-05:00
print (dt_pst)
# 2015-01-01 12:00:00-08:00
print (dt_pdt)
# 2015-07-01 12:00:00-07:00

CAUTION : As of version 2.5.3, dateutil does not handle ambiguous

datetimes correctly, and will always default to the later date. There is no way
to construct an object with a dateutil timezone representing, for example 2015
-11 -01 1 :30 EDT4 , since this is during a daylight savings time transition.

All edge cases are handled properly when using pytz, but pytz time zones
should not be directly attached to time zones through the constructor. Instead,
a pytz time zone should be attached using the time zone's localize method:

from datetime import datetime , timedelta import pytz

PT = pytz.timezone('US/Pacific' )
dt_pst = PT.localize(datetime (2015 , 1 , 1 , 12 )) dt_pdt = PT.localize(datetime
(2015 , 11 , 1 , 0 , 30 )) print (dt_pst)
# 2015-01-01 12:00:00-08:00
print (dt_pdt)
# 2015-11-01 00:30:00-07:00

Be aware that if you perform datetime arithmetic on a pytz-aware time zone,

you must either perform the calculations in UTC (if you want absolute
elapsed time), or you must call normalize() on the result:

dt_new = dt_pdt + timedelta(hours= 3 ) # This should be 2:30 AM PST print

(dt_new)
# 2015-11-01 03:30:00-07:00
dt_corrected = PT.normalize(dt_new)
print (dt_corrected)
# 2015-11-01 02:30:00-08:00

Section 5.3: Computing time di ☐ erences

the timedelta module comes in handy to compute differences between times:

from datetime import datetime , timedelta

now = datetime .now()
then = datetime (2016 , 5 , 23 ) # datetime.datetime(2016, 05, 23, 0, 0, 0)

Specifying time is optional when creating a new datetime object

delta = now-then
delta is of type timedelta

print (delta.days) # 60
print (delta.seconds) # 40826

To get n day's after and n day's before date we could use:

n day's after date:
def get_n_days_after_date(date_format= "%d %B %Y" , add_days= 120 ):
date_n_days_after = datetime .datetime .now() + timedelta(days= add_days)
return date_n_days_after.strftime(date_format)
n day's before date:
def get_n_days_before_date(self , date_format= "%d %B %Y" , days_before=
120 ):
date_n_days_ago = datetime .datetime .now() - timedelta(days= days_before)
return date_n_days_ago.strftime(date_format)

Section 5.4: Basic datetime objects usage

The datetime module contains three primary types of objects - date, time, and
datetime.
import datetime

# Date object
today = datetime .date.today()
new_year = datetime .date(2017 , 01 , 01 ) #datetime.date(2017, 1, 1)

# Time object
noon = datetime .time (12 , 0 , 0 ) #datetime.time(12, 0)
# Current datetime
now = datetime .datetime .now()
# Datetime object
millenium_turn = datetime .datetime (2000 , 1 , 1 , 0 , 0 , 0 )
#datetime.datetime(2000, 1, 1, 0, 0)
Arithmetic operations for these objects are only supported within same
datatype and performing simple arithmetic with instances of different types
will result in a TypeError.

# subtraction of noon from today

noon-today
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unsupported operand type (s) for -: 'datetime.time' and
'datetime.date' However, it is straightforward to convert between types .

# Do this instead
print ('Time since the millenium at midnight: ' ,
datetime .datetime (today.year, today.month, today.day) - millenium_turn) #
Or this
print ('Time since the millenium at noon: ' ,
datetime .datetime .combine(today, noon) - millenium_turn)

Section 5.5: Switching between time zones

To switch between time zones, you need datetime objects that are timezone-
aware.
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil import tz
utc = tz.tzutc()
local = tz.tzlocal()
utc_now = datetime .utcnow()
utc_now # Not timezone-aware.
utc_now = utc_now.replace(tzinfo= utc)
utc_now # Timezone-aware.
local_now = utc_now.astimezone(local)
local_now # Converted to local time.

Section 5.6: Simple date arithmetic

Dates don't exist in isolation. It is common that you will need to find the
amount of time between dates or determine what the date will be tomorrow.
This can be accomplished using timedelta objects
import datetime
today = datetime .date.today()
print ('Today:' , today)
yesterday = today - datetime .timedelta(days= 1 )
print ('Yesterday:' , yesterday)
tomorrow = today + datetime .timedelta(days= 1 )
print ('Tomorrow:' , tomorrow)
print ('Time between tomorrow and yesterday:' , tomorrow - yesterday)
This will produce results similar to:

Today: 2016-04-15
Yesterday: 2016-04-14
Tomorrow: 2016-04-16
Difference between tomorrow and yesterday: 2 days, 0:00:00

Section 5.7: Converting timestamp to datetime

The datetime module can convert a POSIX timestamp to a ITC datetime

object.
The Epoch is January 1st, 1970 midnight.

import time
from datetime import datetime
seconds_since_epoch= time .time () #1469182681.709

utc_date= datetime .utcfromtimestamp(seconds_since_epoch)

#datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 10, 18, 1, 709000)

Section 5.8: Subtracting months from a date accurately

Using the calendar module
import calendar
from datetime import date

def monthdelta(date, delta):

m, y = (date.month+delta) % 12 , date.year + ((date.month)+delta1 ) // 12 if
not m: m = 12
d = min (date.day, calendar .monthrange(y, m)[1 ])
return date.replace(day= d, month= m, year= y)

next_month = monthdelta(date.today(), 1 ) #datetime.date(2016, 10, 23)

Using the dateutils module
import datetime
import dateutil.relativedelta
d = datetime .datetime .strptime("2013-03-31" , "%Y-%m-%d" )
d2 = d - dateutil.relativedelta.relativedelta(months= 1 )
#datetime.datetime(2013, 2, 28, 0, 0)

Section 5.9: Parsing an arbitrary ISO 8601 timestamp with

minimal libraries
Python has only limited support for parsing ISO 8601 timestamps. For
strptime you need to know exactly what format it is in. As a complication the
stringification of a datetime is an ISO 8601 timestamp, with space as a
separator and 6 digit fraction:

str (datetime .datetime (2016 , 7 , 22 , 9 , 25 , 59 , 555555 )) # '2016-07-22

09:25:59.555555'
but if the fraction is 0, no fractional part is output
str (datetime .datetime (2016 , 7 , 22 , 9 , 25 , 59 , 0 )) # '2016-07-22 09:25:59'

But these 2 forms need a different format for strptime. Furthermore, strptime'
does not support at all parsing minute timezones that have a :in it, thus2016-
07-22 09:25:59+0300can be parsed, but the standard format2016-07-22
09:25:59+03:00` cannot.

There is a single-file library called iso8601 which properly parses ISO 8601
timestamps and only them.
It supports fractions and timezones, and the T separator all with a single
function:

import iso8601
iso8601.parse_date('2016-07-22 09:25:59' )
# datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 9, 25, 59, tzinfo=<iso8601.Utc>)
iso8601.parse_date('2016-07-22 09:25:59+03:00' )
# datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 9, 25, 59, tzinfo=<FixedOffset '+03:00' ...>)
iso8601.parse_date('2016-07-22 09:25:59Z' )
# datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 9, 25, 59, tzinfo=<iso8601.Utc>)
iso8601.parse_date('2016-07-22T09:25:59.000111+03:00' )
# datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 9, 25, 59, 111, tzinfo=<FixedOffset '+03:00'
...>)

If no timezone is set, iso8601.parse_date defaults to UTC. The default zone

can be changed with default_zone keyword argument. Notably, if this is
None instead of the default, then those timestamps that do not have an
explicit timezone are returned as naive datetimes instead:

iso8601.parse_date( '2016-07-22T09:25:59' , default_timezone= None ) #

datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 9, 25, 59)
iso8601.parse_date('2016-07-22T09:25:59Z' , default_timezone= None ) #
datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 22, 9, 25, 59, tzinfo=<iso8601.Utc>)

Section 5.10: Get an ISO 8601 timestamp

Without timezone, with microseconds
from datetime import datetime
datetime .now().isoformat()
# Out: '2016-07-31T23:08:20.886783'
With timezone, with microseconds
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.tz import tzlocal
datetime .now(tzlocal()).isoformat()
# Out: '2016-07-31T23:09:43.535074-07:00'
With timezone, without microseconds
from datetime import datetime
from dateutil.tz import tzlocal
datetime .now(tzlocal()).replace(microsecond= 0 ).isoformat() # Out: '2016-
07-31T23:10:30-07:00'
See ISO 8601 for more information about the ISO 8601 format.

Section 5.11: Parsing a string with a short time zone name into
a timezone aware datetime object
Using the dateutil library as in the previous example on parsing timezone-
aware timestamps, it is also possible to parse timestamps with a specified
"short" time zone name.

For dates formatted with short time zone names or abbreviations, which are
generally ambiguous (e.g. CST, which could be Central Standard Time,
China Standard Time, Cuba Standard Time, etc - more can be found here ) or
not necessarily available in a standard database, it is necessary to specify a
mapping between time zone abbreviation and tzinfo object.

from dateutil import tz

from dateutil.parser import parse
ET = tz.gettz('US/Eastern' ) CT = tz.gettz('US/Central' ) MT =
tz.gettz('US/Mountain' ) PT = tz.gettz('US/Pacific' )

us_tzinfos = {'CST' : CT, 'CDT' : CT, 'EST' : ET, 'EDT' : ET, 'MST' : MT,
'MDT' : MT, 'PST' : PT, 'PDT' : PT}

dt_est = parse('2014-01-02 04:00:00 EST' , tzinfos= us_tzinfos) dt_pst =

parse('2016-03-11 16:00:00 PST' , tzinfos= us_tzinfos)
After running this:

dt_est
# datetime.datetime(2014, 1, 2, 4, 0,
tzinfo=tzfile('/usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Eastern')) dt_pst
# datetime.datetime(2016, 3, 11, 16, 0,
tzinfo=tzfile('/usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Pacific'))

It is worth noting that if using a pytz time zone with this method, it will not
be properly localized:
from dateutil.parser import parse import pytz
EST = pytz.timezone('America/New_York' )
dt = parse('2014-02-03 09:17:00 EST' , tzinfos= {'EST' : EST})
This simply attaches the pytz time zone to the datetime:
dt.tzinfo # Will be in Local Mean Time!
# <DstTzInfo 'America/New_York' LMT-1 day, 19:04:00 STD>
If using this method, you should probably relocalize the naive portion of the
datetime after parsing:

dt_fixed = dt.tzinfo.localize(dt.replace(tzinfo= None )) dt_fixed.tzinfo # Now

it's EST.
# <DstTzInfo 'America/New_York' EST-1 day, 19:00:00 STD>)

Section 5.12: Fuzzy datetime parsing (extracting datetime out

of a text)
It is possible to extract a date out of a text using the dateutil parser in a
"fuzzy" mode, where components of the string not recognized as being part
of a date are ignored.
from dateutil.parser import parse
dt = parse("Today is January 1, 2047 at 8:21:00AM" , fuzzy= True ) print (dt)
dt is now a datetime object and you would see datetime .datetime (2047 , 1 , 1
21 ) printed.

Section 5.13: Iterate over dates

Sometimes you want to iterate over a range of dates from a start date to some
end date. You can do it using datetime library and timedelta object:
import datetime
# The size of each step in days day_delta = datetime .timedelta(days= 1 )
start_date = datetime .date.today() end_date = start_date + 7 *day_delta
for i in range ((end_date - start_date).days): print (start_date + i*day_delta)
Which produces:

2016-07-21
2016-07-22
2016-07-23
2016-07-24
2016-07-25
2016-07-26
2016-07-27

Chapter 6: Date Formatting

Section 6.1: Time between two date-times

from datetime import datetime

a = datetime (2016 , 10 , 06 , 0 , 0 , 0 )
b = datetime (2016 , 10 , 01 , 23 , 59 , 59 )
a-b
# datetime.timedelta(4, 1)

(a-b).days
#4
(a-b).total_seconds()
# 518399.0
Section 6.2: Outputting datetime object to string

Uses C standard format codes .

from datetime import datetime

datetime_for_string = datetime (2016 , 10 , 1 , 0 , 0 )
datetime_string_format = '%b %d %Y, %H:%M:%S'
datetime .strftime(datetime_for_string, datetime_string_format)
# Oct 01 2016, 00:00:00

Section 6.3: Parsing string to datetime object

Uses C standard format codes .

from datetime import datetime

datetime_string = 'Oct 1 2016, 00:00:00'
datetime_string_format = '%b %d %Y, %H:%M:%S'
datetime .strptime(datetime_string, datetime_string_format) #
datetime.datetime(2016, 10, 1, 0, 0)

Chapter 7: Enum
Section 7.1: Creating an enum (Python 2.4 through 3.3)
Enums have been backported from Python 3.4 to Python 2.4 through Python
3.3. You can get this the enum34 backport from PyPI.
pip install enum34
Creation of an enum is identical to how it works in Python 3.4+
from enum import Enum

class Color(Enum):
red = 1
green = 2
blue = 3

print (Color.red) # Color.red

print (Color(1 )) # Color.red
print (Color['red' ]) # Color.red

Section 7.2: Iteration

Enums are iterable:

class Color(Enum):
red = 1
green = 2
blue = 3

[c for c in Color] # [<Color.red: 1>, <Color.green: 2>, <Color.blue: 3>]

Chapter 8: Set
Section 8.1: Operations on sets

with other sets

# Intersection
{1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 }.intersection({3 , 4 , 5 , 6 }) # {3, 4, 5} {1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 } & {3
4, 5}

# Union
{1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 }.union({3 , 4 , 5 , 6 }) # {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} {1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 } | {3
2, 3, 4, 5, 6}

# Difference
{1 , 2 , 3 , 4 }.difference({2 , 3 , 5 }) # {1, 4}
{1 , 2 , 3 , 4 } - {2 , 3 , 5 } # {1, 4}

# Symmetric difference with

{1 , 2 , 3 , 4 }.symmetric_difference({2 , 3 , 5 }) # {1, 4, 5} {1 , 2 , 3 , 4 } ^ {2
{1, 4, 5}

# Superset check
{1 , 2 }.issuperset({1 , 2 , 3 }) # False
{1 , 2 } >= {1 , 2 , 3 } # False

# Subset check
{1 , 2 }.issubset({1 , 2 , 3 }) # True
{1 , 2 } <= {1 , 2 , 3 } # True

# Disjoint check
{1 , 2 }.isdisjoint({3 , 4 }) # True
{1 , 2 }.isdisjoint({1 , 4 }) # False

with single elements

# Existence check
2 in {1 , 2 , 3 } # True
4 in {1 , 2 , 3 } # False
4 not in {1 , 2 , 3 } # True

# Add and Remove

s = {1 , 2 , 3 }
s.add(4 ) # s == {1,2,3,4}

s.discard(3 ) # s == {1,2,4} s.discard(5 ) # s == {1,2,4}

s.remove(2 ) # s == {1,4} s.remove(2 ) # KeyError!
Set operations return new sets, but have the corresponding in-place versions:
method union
intersection
difference
in-place operation in-place method s |= t update
s &= t intersection_update s -= t difference_update symmetric_difference s
^= t symmetric_difference_update For example:
s = {1 , 2 }
s.update({3 , 4 }) # s == {1, 2, 3, 4}

Section 8.2: Get the unique elements of a list

Let's say you've got a list of restaurants -- maybe you read it from a file. You
care about the unique restaurants in the list. The best way to get the unique
elements from a list is to turn it into a set:
restaurants = ["McDonald's" , "Burger King" , "McDonald's" , "Chicken
Chicken" ]
unique_restaurants = set (restaurants)
print (unique_restaurants)
# prints {'Chicken Chicken', "McDonald's", 'Burger King'}

Note that the set is not in the same order as the original list; that is because
sets are unordered , just like dict s.
This can easily be transformed back into a List with Python's built in list
function, giving another list that is the same list as the original but without
duplicates:
list (unique_restaurants)
# ['Chicken Chicken', "McDonald's", 'Burger King']
It's also common to see this as one line:
# Removes all duplicates and returns another list list (set (restaurants))
Now any operations that could be performed on the original list can be done
again.

Section 8.3: Set of Sets

{{1 , 2 }, {3 , 4 }}
leads to:
TypeError : unhashable type : 'set'
Instead, use frozenset :
{frozenset ({1 , 2 }), frozenset ({3 , 4 })}

Section 8.4: Set Operations using Methods and Builtins

We define two sets a and b
>>> a = {1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 }
>>> b = {3 , 3 , 4 , 4 , 5 }
NOTE: {1 } creates a set of one element, but {} creates an empty dict . The
correct way to create an empty set is set ().
Intersection
a.intersection(b) returns a new set with elements present in both a and b
>>> a.intersection(b) {3 , 4 }
Union
a.union(b) returns a new set with elements present in either a and b
>>> a.union(b) {1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 } Difference
a.difference(b) returns a new set with elements present in a but not in b

>>> a.difference(b) {1 , 2 }
>>> b.difference(a) {5 }

Symmetric Difference
a.symmetric_difference(b) returns a new set with elements present in either a
or b but not in both

>>> a.symmetric_difference(b) {1 , 2 , 5 }
>>> b.symmetric_difference(a) {1 , 2 , 5 }

NOTE : a.symmetric_difference(b) == b.symmetric_difference(a)

Subset and superset
c.issubset(a) tests whether each element of c is in a.
a.issuperset(c) tests whether each element of c is in a.

>>> c = {1 , 2 }
>>> c.issubset(a) True
>>> a.issuperset(c) True

The latter operations have equivalent operators as shown below:

Method Operator a.intersection(b) a & b

a.union(b) a|b a.difference(b) a - b a.symmetric_difference(b) a ^ b

a.issubset(b) a <= b a.issuperset(b) a >= b

Disjoint sets
Sets a and d are disjoint if no element in a is also in d and vice versa.

>>> d = {5 , 6 }
>>> a.isdisjoint(b) # {2, 3, 4} are in both sets False
>>> a.isdisjoint(d)
True

# This is an equivalent check, but less efficient >>> len (a & d) == 0

True

# This is even less efficient >>> a & d == set ()

True

Testing membership
The builtin in keyword searches for occurances

>>> 1 in a True
>>> 6 in a False

Length
The builtin len () function returns the number of elements in the set

>>> len (a) 4

>>> len (b) 3

Section 8.5: Sets versus multisets

Sets are unordered collections of distinct elements. But sometimes we want
to work with unordered collections of elements that are not necessarily
distinct and keep track of the elements' multiplicities.
Consider this example:

>>> setA = {'a' , 'b' , 'b' , 'c' }

>>> setA
set (['a' , 'c' , 'b' ])

By saving the strings 'a' , 'b' , 'b' , 'c' into a set data structure we've lost the
information on the fact that 'b' occurs twice. Of course saving the elements to
a list would retain this information

>>> listA = ['a' , 'b' , 'b' , 'c' ] >>> listA

['a' , 'b' , 'b' , 'c' ]

but a list data structure introduces an extra unneeded ordering that will slow
down our computations.
For implementing multisets Python provides the Counter class from the
collections module (starting from version 2.7):
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.7

>>> from collections import Counter >>> counterA = Counter(['a' , 'b' , 'b' , 'c'
>>> counterA
Counter({'b' : 2 , 'a' : 1 , 'c' : 1 })

Counter is a dictionary where where elements are stored as dictionary keys

and their counts are stored as dictionary values. And as all dictionaries, it is
an unordered collection.

Chapter 9: Simple Mathematical Operators

Numerical types and their metaclasses
The numbers module contains the abstract metaclasses for the numerical
types:

subclasses numbers.Number numbers.Integral numbers.Rational

numbers.Real numbers.Complex bool ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ int ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
fractions.Fraction ✓ ― ✓ ✓ ✓ float ✓ ― ― ✓ ✓ complex ✓ ― ― ―
✓ decimal.Decimal ✓ ― ― ― ―

Python does common mathematical operators on its own, including integer

and float division, multiplication, exponentiation, addition, and subtraction.
The math module (included in all standard Python versions) offers expanded
functionality like trigonometric functions, root operations, logarithms, and
many more.

Section 9.1: Division

Python does integer division when both operands are integers. The behavior
of Python's division operators have changed from Python 2.x and 3.x (see
also Integer Division ).
a, b, c, d, e = 3 , 2 , 2.0 , 3 , 10 Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
In Python 2 the result of the ' / ' operator depends on the type of the
numerator and denominator.
a/b#=1
a / c # = 1.5
d / b # = -2
b/a#=0
d / e # = -1
Note that because both a and b are int s, the result is an int .
The result is always rounded down (floored).
Because c is a float, the result of a / c is a float .
You can also use the operator module:

import operator # the operator module provides 2-argument arithmetic

functions operator .div(a, b) # = 1
operator .__div__ (a, b) # = 1

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.2

What if you want float division:
Recommended:

from __future__ import division # applies Python 3 style division to the

entire module a / b # = 1.5
a // b # = 1

Okay (if you don't want to apply to the whole module):

a / (b * 1.0 ) # = 1.5
1.0 * a / b # = 1.5
a / b * 1.0 # = 1.0 (careful with order of operations)

from operator import truediv truediv(a, b) # = 1.5

Not recommended (may raise TypeError, eg if argument is complex):
float (a) / b # = 1.5 a / float (b) # = 1.5 Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.2
The ' // ' operator in Python 2 forces floored division regardless of type.
a // b # = 1 a // c # = 1.0 Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
In Python 3 the / operator performs 'true' division regardless of types. The //
operator performs floor division and maintains type.

a / b # = 1.5 e / b # = 5.0 a // b # = 1 a // c # = 1.0

import operator # the operator module provides 2-argument arithmetic

functions operator .truediv(a, b) # = 1.5
operator .floordiv(a, b) # = 1
operator .floordiv(a, c) # = 1.0

Possible combinations (builtin types):

int and int (gives an int in Python 2 and a float in Python 3) int and float
(gives a float )
int and complex (gives a complex )
float and float (gives a float )
float and complex (gives a complex )
complex and complex (gives a complex )

See PEP 238 for more information.

Section 9.2: Addition

a, b = 1 , 2
# Using the "+" operator:
a+b#=3
# Using the "in-place" "+=" operator to add and assign: a += b # a = 3
(equivalent to a = a + b)
import operator # contains 2 argument arithmetic functions for the examples
operator .add(a, b) # = 5 since a is set to 3 right before this line
# The "+=" operator is equivalent to:
a = operator .iadd(a, b) # a = 5 since a is set to 3 right before this line
Possible combinations (builtin types):

int and int (gives an int )

int and float (gives a float )
int and complex (gives a complex ) float and float (gives a float ) float and
complex (gives a complex ) complex and complex (gives a complex )

Note: the + operator is also used for concatenating strings, lists and tuples:
"first string " + "second string" # = 'first string second string' [1 , 2 , 3 ] + [4 ,
] # = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
Section 9.3: Exponentiation

a, b = 2 , 3
(a ** b) # = 8
pow (a, b) # = 8
import math
math .pow (a, b) # = 8.0 (always float; does not allow complex results)
import operator
operator .pow (a, b) # = 8
Another difference between the built-in pow and math .pow is that the built-
in pow can accept three arguments:
a, b, c = 2 , 3 , 2
pow (2 , 3 , 2 ) # 0, calculates (2 ** 3) % 2, but as per Python docs, # does so
more efficiently
Special functions
The function math .sqrt(x) calculates the square root of x.

import math
import cmath
c=4
math .sqrt(c) # = 2.0 (always float; does not allow complex results) cmath
.sqrt(c) # = (2+0j) (always complex)

To compute other roots, such as a cube root, raise the number to the
reciprocal of the degree of the root. This could be done with any of the
exponential functions or operator.

import math
x=8
math .pow (x, 1 /3 ) # evaluates to 2.0 x**(1 /3 ) # evaluates to 2.0

The function math .exp(x) computes e ** x.

math .exp(0 ) # 1.0
math .exp(1 ) # 2.718281828459045 (e)
The function math .expm1(x) computes e ** x - 1 . When x is small, this
gives significantly better precision than math .exp(x) - 1 .
math .expm1(0 ) # 0.0
math .exp(1e-6 ) - 1 # 1.0000004999621837e-06
math .expm1(1e-6 ) # 1.0000005000001665e-06
# exact result # 1.000000500000166666708333341666...

Section 9.4: Trigonometric Functions

a, b = 1 , 2
import math
math .sin(a) # returns the sine of 'a' in radians
# Out: 0.8414709848078965
math .cosh(b) # returns the inverse hyperbolic cosine of 'b' in radians # Out:
3.7621956910836314
math .atan(math .pi) # returns the arc tangent of 'pi' in radians # Out:
1.2626272556789115
math .hypot(a, b) # returns the Euclidean norm, same as math.sqrt(a*a +
b*b) # Out: 2.23606797749979
Note that math .hypot(x, y) is also the length of the vector (or Euclidean
distance) from the origin (0 , 0 ) to the point (x, y).
To compute the Euclidean distance between two points (x1, y1) & (x2, y2)
you can use math .hypot as follows
math .hypot(x2-x1, y2-y1)
To convert from radians -> degrees and degrees -> radians respectively use
math .degrees and math .radians
math .degrees(a)
# Out: 57.29577951308232
math .radians(57.29577951308232 ) # Out: 1.0

Section 9.5: Inplace Operations

It is common within applications to need to have code like this:
a=a+1
or
a=a*2
There is an effective shortcut for these in place operations:

a+=1
# and
a *= 2

Any mathematic operator can be used before the '=' character to make an
inplace operation:

-= decrement the variable in place

+= increment the variable in place
*= multiply the variable in place

/= divide the variable in place

//= floor divide the variable in place # Python 3
%= return the modulus of the variable in place
**= raise to a power in place

Other in place operators exist for the bitwise operators (^, | etc)

Section 9.6: Subtraction

a, b = 1 , 2
# Using the "-" operator:
b-a#=1
import operator # contains 2 argument arithmetic functions operator .sub(b, a)
#=1
Possible combinations (builtin types):

int and int (gives an int )

int and float (gives a float )
int and complex (gives a complex ) float and float (gives a float ) float and
complex (gives a complex ) complex and complex (gives a complex )

Section 9.7: Multiplication

a, b = 2 , 3
a*b#=6
import operator
operator .mul(a, b) # = 6
Possible combinations (builtin types):
int and int (gives an int )
int and float (gives a float )
int and complex (gives a complex ) float and float (gives a float ) float and
complex (gives a complex ) complex and complex (gives a complex )

Note: The * operator is also used for repeated concatenation of strings, lists,
and tuples:
3 * 'ab' # = 'ababab'
3 * ('a' , 'b' ) # = ('a', 'b', 'a', 'b', 'a', 'b')

Section 9.8: Logarithms

By default, the math .log function calculates the logarithm of a number, base
e. You can optionally specify a base as the second argument.
import math
import cmath

math .log(5 ) # = 1.6094379124341003

# optional base argument. Default is math.e
math .log(5 , math .e) # = 1.6094379124341003
cmath .log(5 ) # = (1.6094379124341003+0j)
math .log(1000 , 10 ) # 3.0 (always returns float)
cmath .log(1000 , 10 ) # (3+0j)

Special variations of the math .log function exist for different bases.
# Logarithm base e - 1 (higher precision for low values) math .log1p(5 ) # =
1.791759469228055
# Logarithm base 2
math .log2(8 ) # = 3.0

# Logarithm base 10
math .log10(100 ) # = 2.0 cmath .log10(100 ) # = (2+0j)

Section 9.9: Modulus

Like in many other languages, Python uses the % operator for calculating
modulus.
3%4#3
10 % 2 # 0
6%4#2

Or by using the operator module:

import operator

operator .mod(3 , 4 ) # 3
operator .mod(10 , 2 ) # 0
operator .mod(6 , 4 ) # 2

You can also use negative numbers.

- 9 % 7 # 5 9 % 7 # -5
-9 % 7 # -2

If you need to find the result of integer division and modulus, you can use the
divmod function as a shortcut:
quotient, remainder = divmod (9 , 4 )
# quotient = 2, remainder = 1 as 4 * 2 + 1 == 9

Chapter 10: Bitwise Operators

Bitwise operations alter binary strings at the bit level. These operations are
incredibly basic and are directly supported by the processor. These few
operations are necessary in working with device drivers, low-level graphics,
cryptography, and network communications. This section provides useful
knowledge and examples of Python's bitwise operators.

Section 10.1: Bitwise NOT

The ~ operator will flip all of the bits in the number. Since computers use
signed number representations — most notably, the two's complement
notation to encode negative binary numbers where negative numbers are
written with a leading one (1) instead of a leading zero (0).

This means that if you were using 8 bits to represent your two's-complement
numbers, you would treat patterns from 0000 0000 to 0111 1111 to represent
numbers from 0 to 127 and reserve 1xxx xxxx to represent negative numbers.

Eight-bit two's-complement numbers

Bits Unsigned Value Two's-complement Value

0000 00000 0
0000 0001 1 1
0000 0010 2 2
0111 1110 126 126
0111 1111 127 127
1000 0000 128 -128
1000 0001 129 -127
1000 0010 130 -126
1111 1110 254 -2
1111 1111 255 -1

In essence, this means that whereas 1010 0110 has an unsigned value of 166
(arrived at by adding (128 * 1 ) + (64 * 0 ) + (32 * 1 ) + (16 * 0 ) + (8 * 0 ) +
(4 * 1 ) + (2 * 1 ) + (1 * 0 )), it has a two's-complement value of -90 (arrived
at by adding (128 * 1 ) - (64 * 0 ) - (32 * 1 ) - (16 * 0 ) - (8 * 0 ) - (4 * 1 ) - (2
* 1 ) (1 * 0 ), and complementing the value).

In this way, negative numbers range down to -128 (1000 0000 ). Zero (0) is
represented as 0000 0000 , and minus one (-1) as 1111 1111 .
In general, though, this means ~ n = -n - 1 .

# 0 = 0b0000 0000 ~ 0
# Out: -1
# -1 = 0b1111 1111

# 1 = 0b0000 0001 ~ 1
# Out: -2
# -2 = 1111 1110

# 2 = 0b0000 0010 ~ 2
# Out: -3
# -3 = 0b1111 1101
# 123 = 0b0111 1011 ~ 123
# Out: -124
# -124 = 0b1000 0100

Note , the overall effect of this operation when applied to positive numbers
can be summarized:
~ n > -|n+1 |
And then, when applied to negative numbers, the corresponding effect is:
~ -n > |n1 |
The following examples illustrate this last rule...

# -0 = 0b0000 0000
~ -0
# Out: -1
# -1 = 0b1111 1111
# 0 is the obvious exception to this rule, as -0 == 0 always

# -1 = 0b1000 0001 ~ -1
# Out: 0
# 0 = 0b0000 0000

# -2 = 0b1111 1110 ~ -2
# Out: 1
# 1 = 0b0000 0001

# -123 = 0b1111 1011 ~ -123

# Out: 122
# 122 = 0b0111 1010

Section 10.2: Bitwise XOR (Exclusive OR)

The ^ operator will perform a binary XOR in which a binary 1 is copied if
and only if it is the value of exactly one operand. Another way of stating this
is that the result is 1 only if the operands are different. Examples include:

#0^0=0
#0^1=1
#1^0=1
#1^1=0

# 60 = 0b111100 # 30 = 0b011110 60 ^ 30
# Out: 34
# 34 = 0b100010

bin(60 ^ 30 ) # Out: 0b100010

Section 10.3: Bitwise AND

The & operator will perform a binary AND , where a bit is copied if it exists
in both operands. That means:

#0&0=0
#0&1=0
#1&0=0
#1&1=1

# 60 = 0b111100
# 30 = 0b011110
60 & 30
# Out: 28
# 28 = 0b11100

bin(60 & 30 ) # Out: 0b11100

Section 10.4: Bitwise OR

The | operator will perform a binary "or," where a bit is copied if it exists in
either operand. That means:

#0|0=0
#0|1=1
#1|0=1
#1|1=1

# 60 = 0b111100
# 30 = 0b011110
60 | 30
# Out: 62
# 62 = 0b111110

bin(60 | 30 ) # Out: 0b111110

Section 10.5: Bitwise Left Shift

The << operator will perform a bitwise "left shift," where the left operand's
value is moved left by the number of bits given by the right operand.

# 2 = 0b10 2 << 2
# Out: 8
# 8 = 0b1000

bin(2 << 2 ) # Out: 0b1000

Performing a left bit shift of 1 is equivalent to multiplication by 2:
7 << 1
# Out: 14
Performing a left bit shift of n is equivalent to multiplication by 2 **n:
3 << 4
# Out: 48

Section 10.6: Bitwise Right Shift

The >> operator will perform a bitwise "right shift," where the left operand's
value is moved right by the number of bits given by the right operand.

# 8 = 0b1000
8 >> 2
# Out: 2
# 2 = 0b10

bin(8 >> 2 )
# Out: 0b10
Performing a right bit shift of 1 is equivalent to integer division by 2:
36 >> 1
# Out: 18
15 >> 1 # Out: 7
Performing a right bit shift of n is equivalent to integer division by 2 **n:
48 >> 4 # Out: 3
59 >> 3 # Out: 7

Section 10.7: Inplace Operations

All of the Bitwise operators (except ~) have their own in place versions

a = 0b001
a &= 0b010
# a = 0b000

a = 0b001
a |= 0b010
# a = 0b011

a = 0b001
a <<= 2
# a = 0b100

a = 0b100
a >>= 2
# a = 0b001

a = 0b101
a ^= 0b011
# a = 0b110

Chapter 11: Boolean Operators

Section 11.1: `and` and `or` are not guaranteed to return a
boolean

When you use or, it will either return the first value in the expression if it's
true, else it will blindly return the second value. I.e. or is equivalent to:
def or_(a, b):
if a:
return a
else :
return b
For and , it will return its first value if it's false, else it returns the last value:
def and_(a, b): if not a: return a else :
return b

Section 11.2: A simple example

In Python you can compare a single element using two binary operators--one
on either side:
if 3.14 < x < 3.142 :
print ("x is near pi" )
In many (most?) programming languages, this would be evaluated in a way
contrary to regular math: (3.14 < x) < 3.142 , but in Python it is treated like
3.14 < x and x < 3.142 , just like most non-programmers would expect.

Section 11.3: Short-circuit evaluation

Python minimally evaluates Boolean expressions.

>>> def true_func():

... print ("true_func()" )
... return True
...
>>> def false_func():
... print ("false_func()" )
... return False
...
>>> true_func() or false_func()
true_func()
True
>>> false_func() or true_func()
false_func()
true_func()
True
>>> true_func() and false_func()
true_func()
false_func()
False
>>> false_func() and false_func()
false_func() False

Section 11.4: and

Evaluates to the second argument if and only if both of the arguments are
truthy. Otherwise evaluates to the first falsey argument.

x = True
y = True
z = x and y # z = True

x = True
y = False
z = x and y # z = False

x = False
y = True
z = x and y # z = False

x = False
y = False
z = x and y # z = False

x=1
y=1
z = x and y # z = y, so z = 1, see `and` and `or` are not guaranteed to be a
boolean

x=0
y=1
z = x and y # z = x, so z = 0 (see above)
x=1
y=0
z = x and y # z = y, so z = 0 (see above)

x=0
y=0
z = x and y # z = x, so z = 0 (see above)

The 1's in the above example can be changed to any truthy value, and the 0's
can be changed to any falsey value.

Section 11.5: or
Evaluates to the first truthy argument if either one of the arguments is truthy.
If both arguments are falsey, evaluates to the second argument.

x = True
y = True
z = x or y # z = True

x = True
y = False
z = x or y # z = True

x = False
y = True
z = x or y # z = True

x = False
y = False
z = x or y # z = False

x=1
y=1
z = x or y # z = x, so z = 1, see `and` and `or` are not guaranteed to be a
boolean

x=1
y=0
z = x or y # z = x, so z = 1 (see above)

x=0
y=1
z = x or y # z = y, so z = 1 (see above)

x=0
y=0
z = x or y # z = y, so z = 0 (see above)

The 1's in the above example can be changed to any truthy value, and the 0's
can be changed to any falsey value.

Section 11.6: not

It returns the opposite of the following statement:
x = True
y = not x # y = False
x = False
y = not x # y = True

Chapter 12: Operator Precedence

Python operators have a set order of precedence , which determines what
operators are evaluated first in a potentially ambiguous expression. For
instance, in the expression 3 * 2 + 7, first 3 is multiplied by 2, and then the
result is added to 7, yielding 13. The expression is not evaluated the other
way around, because * has a higher precedence than +.

Below is a list of operators by precedence, and a brief description of what

they (usually) do.

Section 12.1: Simple Operator Precedence Examples in python

Python follows PEMDAS rule. PEMDAS stands for Parentheses, Exponents,
Multiplication and Division, and Addition and Subtraction.
Example:

>>> a, b, c, d = 2 , 3 , 5 , 7
>>> a ** (b + c) # parentheses
256
>>> a * b ** c # exponent: same as `a * (b ** c)`
7776
>>> a + b * c / d # multiplication / division: same as `a + (b * c / d)`
4.142857142857142

Extras: mathematical rules hold, but not always :

>>> 300 / 300 * 200

200.0
>>> 300 * 200 / 300
200.0
>>> 1e300 / 1e300 * 1e200 1e+200
>>> 1e300 * 1e200 / 1e300 inf

Chapter 13: Variable Scope and Binding

Section 13.1: Nonlocal Variables

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

Python 3 added a new keyword called nonlocal . The nonlocal keyword adds
a scope override to the inner scope. You can read all about it in PEP 3104 .
This is best illustrated with a couple of code examples. One of the most
common examples is to create function that can increment:

def counter():
num = 0
def incrementer():

num + = 1
return num
return incrementer
If you try running this code, you will receive an UnboundLocalError
because the num variable is referenced before it is assigned in the innermost
function. Let's add nonlocal to the mix:

def counter():
num = 0
def incrementer():

nonlocal num num += 1

return num

return incrementer

c = counter() c() # = 1
c() # = 2
c() # = 3

Basically nonlocal will allow you to assign to variables in an outer scope, but
not a global scope. So you can't use nonlocal in our counter function because
then it would try to assign to a global scope. Give it a try and you will
quickly get a SyntaxError . Instead you must use nonlocal in a nested
function.

(Note that the functionality presented here is better implemented using

generators.)

Section 13.2: Global Variables

In Python, variables inside functions are considered local if and only if they
appear in the left side of an assignment statement, or some other binding
occurrence; otherwise such a binding is looked up in enclosing functions, up
to the global scope. This is true even if the assignment statement is never
executed.

x = 'Hi'
def read_x():
print (x) # x is just referenced, therefore assumed global
read_x() # prints Hi
def read_y():
print (y) # here y is just referenced, therefore assumed global read_y() #
NameError: global name 'y' is not defined

def read_y():
y = 'Hey' # y appears in an assignment, therefore it's local print (y) # will find
the local y

read_y() # prints Hey

def read_x_local_fail():
if False :
x = 'Hey' # x appears in an assignment, therefore it's local
print (x) # will look for the _local_ z, which is not assigned, and will not be
found
read_x_local_fail() # UnboundLocalError: local variable 'x' referenced
before assignment
Normally, an assignment inside a scope will shadow any outer variables of
the same name:
x = 'Hi'

def change_local_x():
x = 'Bye'
print (x)

change_local_x() # prints Bye print (x) # prints Hi

Declaring a name global means that, for the rest of the scope, any
assignments to the name will happen at the module's top level:
x = 'Hi'

def change_global_x(): global x

x = 'Bye'
print (x)

change_global_x() # prints Bye print (x) # prints Bye

The global keyword means that assignments will happen at the module's top
level, not at the program's top level. Other modules will still need the usual
dotted access to variables within the module.
To summarize: in order to know whether a variable x is local to a function,
you should read the entire function:

1. if you've found global x, then x is a global variable

2. If you've found nonlocal x, then x belongs to an enclosing function, and is
neither local nor global
3. If you've found x = 5 or for x in range (3 ) or some other binding, then x is a
local variable
4. Otherwise x belongs to some enclosing scope (function scope, global
scope, or builtins)

Section 13.3: Local Variables

If a name is bound inside a function, it is by default accessible only within
the function:

def foo():
a=5
print (a) # ok

print (a) # NameError: name 'a' is not defined

Control flow constructs have no impact on the scope (with the exception of
except ), but accessing variable that was not assigned yet is an error:
def foo():
if True :
a=5
print (a) # ok
b=3
def bar():
if False :
b=5
print (b) # UnboundLocalError: local variable 'b' referenced before
assignment Common binding operations are assignments, for loops, and
augmented assignments such as a += 5

Section 13.4: The del command

This command has several related yet distinct forms.
del v
If v is a variable, the command del v removes the variable from its scope. For
example:

x=5
print (x) # out: 5
del x
print (x) # NameError: name 'f' is not defined

Note that del is a binding occurrence , which means that unless explicitly
stated otherwise (using nonlocal or global ), del v will make v local to the
current scope. If you intend to delete v in an outer scope, use nonlocal v or
global v in the same scope of the del v statement.

In all the following, the intention of a command is a default behavior but is

not enforced by the language. A class might be written in a way that
invalidates this intention.
del v.name
This command triggers a call to v.__delattr__ (name).
The intention is to make the attribute name unavailable. For example:
class A: pass

a = A()
a.x = 7
print (a.x) # out: 7
del a.x
print (a.x) # error: AttributeError: 'A' object has no attribute 'x'

del v[item]
This command triggers a call to v.__delitem__ (item).
The intention is that item will not belong in the mapping implemented by the
object v. For example:

x = {'a' : 1 , 'b' : 2 }
del x['a' ]
print (x) # out: {'b': 2}
print (x['a' ]) # error: KeyError: 'a'
del v[a:b]
This actually calls v.__delslice__ (a, b).
The intention is similar to the one described above, but with slices - ranges of
items instead of a single item. For example:

x = [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
del x[1 :3 ]
print (x) # out: [0, 3, 4]

See also Garbage Collection#The del command.

Section 13.5: Functions skip class scope when looking up names

Classes have a local scope during definition, but functions inside the class do
not use that scope when looking up names. Because lambdas are functions,
and comprehensions are implemented using function scope, this can lead to
some surprising behavior.

a = 'global'

class Fred:
a = 'class' # class scope
b = (a for i in range (10 )) # function scope c = [a for i in range (10 )] #
function scope d = a # class scope
e = lambda : a # function scope
f = lambda a= a: a # default argument uses class scope

@ staticmethod # or @classmethod, or regular instance method def g(): #

function scope
return a

print (Fred.a) # class

print (next(Fred.b)) # global
print (Fred.c[0 ]) # class in Python 2, global in Python 3 print (Fred.d) #
class
print (Fred.e()) # global
print (Fred.f()) # class
print (Fred.g()) # global
Users unfamiliar with how this scope works might expect b, c, and e to print
class .
From PEP 227 :
Names in class scope are not accessible. Names are resolved in the innermost
enclosing function scope. If a class definition occurs in a chain of nested
scopes, the resolution process skips class definitions.

From Python's documentation on naming and binding : The scope of names

defined in a class block is limited to the class block; it does not extend to the
code blocks of methods – this includes comprehensions and generator
expressions since they are implemented using a function scope. This means
that the following will fail:

class A:
a = 42
b = list (a + i for i in range (10 ))

This example uses references from this answer by Martijn Pieters, which
contains more in depth analysis of this behavior.

Section 13.6: Local vs Global Scope

What are local and global scope?
All Python variables which are accessible at some point in code are either in
local scope or in global scope .
The explanation is that local scope includes all variables defined in the
current function and global scope includes variables defined outside of the
current function.
foo = 1 # global

def func():
bar = 2 # local
print (foo) # prints variable foo from global scope
print (bar) # prints variable bar from local scope

One can inspect which variables are in which scope. Built-in functions locals
() and globals () return the whole scopes as dictionaries.
foo = 1
def func():
bar = 2
print (globals ().keys()) # prints all variable names in global scope print
(locals ().keys()) # prints all variable names in local scope

What happens with name clashes? foo = 1

def func():
foo = 2 # creates a new variable foo in local scope, global foo is not affected
print (foo) # prints 2

# global variable foo still exists, unchanged: print (globals ()['foo' ]) # prints
1
print (locals ()['foo' ]) # prints 2

To modify a global variable, use keyword global :

foo = 1

def func():
global foo
foo = 2 # this modifies the global foo, rather than creating a local variable

The scope is defined for the whole body of the function!

What it means is that a variable will never be global for a half of the function
and local afterwards, or vice-versa.
foo = 1

def func():
# This function has a local variable foo, because it is defined down below. #
So, foo is local from this point. Global foo is hidden.

print (foo) # raises UnboundLocalError, because local foo is not yet

initialized foo = 7
print (foo)

Likewise, the opposite:

foo = 1
def func():
# In this function, foo is a global variable from the beginning
foo = 7 # global foo is modified
print (foo) # 7
print (globals ()['foo' ]) # 7
global foo # this could be anywhere within the function print (foo) # 7
Functions within functions
There may be many levels of functions nested within functions, but within
any one function there is only one local scope for that function and the global
scope. There are no intermediate scopes.
foo = 1
def f1(): bar = 1

def f2():
baz = 2
# here, foo is a global variable, baz is a local variable # bar is not in either
scope
print (locals ().keys()) # ['baz']
print ('bar' in locals ()) # False
print ('bar' in globals ()) # False

def f3():
baz = 3
print (bar) # bar from f1 is referenced so it enters local scope of f3 (closure)
print (locals ().keys()) # ['bar', 'baz']
print ('bar' in locals ()) # True
print ('bar' in globals ()) # False

def f4():
bar = 4 # a new local bar which hides bar from local scope of f1 baz = 4
print (bar)
print (locals ().keys()) # ['bar', 'baz']
print ('bar' in locals ()) # True
print ('bar' in globals ()) # False

global vs nonlocal (Python 3 only)

Both these keywords are used to gain write access to variables which are not
local to the current functions.
The global keyword declares that a name should be treated as a global
variable.
foo = 0 # global foo
def f1():
foo = 1 # a new foo local in f1
def f2():
foo = 2 # a new foo local in f2

def f3():
foo = 3 # a new foo local in f3 print (foo) # 3
foo = 30 # modifies local foo in f3 only

def f4():
global foo
print (foo) # 0
foo = 100 # modifies global foo

On the other hand, nonlocal (see Nonlocal Variables ), available in Python 3,

takes a local variable from an enclosing scope into the local scope of current
function.
From the Python documentation on nonlocal :
The nonlocal statement causes the listed identifiers to refer to previously
bound variables in the nearest enclosing scope excluding globals.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0 def f1():
def f2():
foo = 2 # a new foo local in f2

def f3():
nonlocal foo # foo from f2, which is the nearest enclosing scope print (foo) #
2
foo = 20 # modifies foo from f2!

Section 13.7: Binding Occurrence

x=5
x += 7
for x in iterable: pass

Each of the above statements is a binding occurrence - x become bound to

the object denoted by 5. If this statement appears inside a function, then x
will be function-local by default. See the "Syntax" section for a list of binding
statements.

Chapter 14: Conditionals

Conditional expressions, involving keywords such as if, elif, and else,
provide Python programs with the ability to perform different actions
depending on a boolean condition: True or False. This section covers the use
of Python conditionals, boolean logic, and ternary statements.

Section 14.1: Conditional Expression (or "The Ternary

Operator")
The ternary operator is used for inline conditional expressions. It is best used
in simple, concise operations that are easily read.

The order of the arguments is different from many other languages (such as
C, Ruby, Java, etc.), which may lead to bugs when people unfamiliar with
Python's "surprising" behaviour use it (they may reverse the order). Some
find it "unwieldy", since it goes contrary to the normal flow of thought
(thinking of the condition first and then the effects).

n=5
"Greater than 2" if n > 2 else "Smaller than or equal to 2"
# Out: 'Greater than 2'
The result of this expression will be as it is read in English - if the conditional
expression is True, then it will evaluate to the expression on the left side,
otherwise, the right side.
Ternary operations can also be nested, as here:
n=5
"Hello" if n > 10 else "Goodbye" if n > 5 else "Good day"
They also provide a method of including conditionals in lambda functions.

Section 14.2: if, elif, and else

In Python you can define a series of conditionals using if for the first one, elif
for the rest, up until the final (optional) else for anything not caught by the
other conditionals.
number = 5

if number > 2 :
print ("Number is bigger than 2." )
elif number < 2 : # Optional clause (you can have multiple elifs)
print ("Number is smaller than 2." )
else : # Optional clause (you can only have one else)
print ("Number is 2." )

Outputs Number is bigger than 2 Using else if instead of elif will trigger a
syntax error and is not allowed.

Section 14.3: Truth Values

The following values are considered falsey, in that they evaluate to False
when applied to a boolean operator. None
False
0, or any numerical value equivalent to zero, for example 0L, 0.0 , 0j Empty
sequences: '', "" , (), []
Empty mappings: {}
User-defined types where the __bool__ or __len__ methods return 0 or False

All other values in Python evaluate to True .

Note: A common mistake is to simply check for the Falseness of an operation
which returns different Falsey values where the difference matters. For
example, using if foo() rather than the more explicit if foo() is None

Section 14.4: Boolean Logic Expressions

Boolean logic expressions, in addition to evaluating to True or False , return

the value that was interpreted as True or False . It is Pythonic way to
represent logic that might otherwise require an if-else test.
And operator
The and operator evaluates all expressions and returns the last expression if
all expressions evaluate to True . Otherwise it returns the first value that
evaluates to False :
>>> 1 and 2 2
>>> 1 and 0 0
>>> 1 and "Hello World" "Hello World"
>>> "" and "Pancakes" ""
Or operator
The or operator evaluates the expressions left to right and returns the first
value that evaluates to True or the last value (if none are True ).
>>> 1 or 2 1
>>> None or 1 1
>>> 0 or [] []
Lazy evaluation
When you use this approach, remember that the evaluation is lazy.
Expressions that are not required to be evaluated to determine the result are
not evaluated. For example:

>>> def print_me():

print ('I am here!' )
>>> 0 and print_me()
0

In the above example, print_me is never executed because Python can

determine the entire expression is False when it encounters the 0 (False ).
Keep this in mind if print_me needs to execute to serve your program logic.
Testing for multiple conditions
A common mistake when checking for multiple conditions is to apply the
logic incorrectly.
This example is trying to check if two variables are each greater than 2. The
statement is evaluated as - if (a) and (b > 2 ). This produces an unexpected
result because bool (a) evaluates as True when a is not zero.

>>> a = 1
>>> b = 6
>>> if a and b > 2 : ... print ('yes' ) ... else :
... print ('no' )

yes
Each variable needs to be compared separately.
>>> if a > 2 and b > 2 : ... print ('yes' ) ... else :
... print ('no' )

no

Another, similar, mistake is made when checking if a variable is one of

multiple values. The statement in this example is evaluated as - if (a == 3 ) or
(4 ) or (6 ). This produces an unexpected result because bool (4 ) and bool (6
) each evaluate to True

>>> a = 1
>>> if a == 3 or 4 or 6 : ... print ('yes' ) ... else :
... print ('no' )

yes
Again each comparison must be made separately

>>> if a == 3 or a == 4 or a == 6 : ... print ('yes' )

... else :
... print ('no' )

no
Using the in operator is the canonical way to write this.

>>> if a in (3 , 4 , 6 ): ... print ('yes' ) ... else :

... print ('no' )

no

Section 14.5: Using the cmp function to get the comparison

result of two objects
Python 2 includes a cmp function which allows you to determine if one
object is less than, equal to, or greater than another object. This function can
be used to pick a choice out of a list based on one of those three options.
Suppose you need to print 'greater than' if x > y, 'less than' if x < y and 'equal'
if x == y.
['equal' , 'greater than' , 'less than' , ][cmp (x, y)]
# x,y = 1,1 output: 'equal'
# x,y = 1,2 output: 'less than'
# x,y = 2,1 output: 'greater than'

cmp (x, y) returns the following values

Comparison Result x < y -1

x == y 0
x>y1

This function is removed on Python 3. You can use the cmp_to_key (func )
helper function located in functools in Python 3 to convert old comparison
functions to key functions.

Section 14.6: Else statement

if condition:
body
else :
body

The else statement will execute it's body only if preceding conditional
statements all evaluate to False.

if True :
print "It is true!"
else :
print "This won't get printed.."

# Output: It is true!

if False :
print "This won't get printed.."
else :
print "It is false!"

# Output: It is false!
Section 14.7: Testing if an object is None and assigning it

You'll often want to assign something to an object if it is None , indicating it

has not been assigned. We'll use aDate.
The simplest way to do this is to use the is None test.
if aDate is None :
aDate= datetime .date.today()
(Note that it is more Pythonic to say is None instead of == None .)
But this can be optimized slightly by exploiting the notion that not None will
evaluate to True in a boolean expression. The following code is equivalent:
if not aDate:
aDate= datetime .date.today()
But there is a more Pythonic way. The following code is also equivalent:
aDate= aDate or datetime .date.today()
This does a Short Circuit evaluation. If aDate is initialized and is not None ,
then it gets assigned to itself with no net effect. If it is None , then the
datetime .date.today() gets assigned to aDate.

Section 14.8: If statement

if condition:
body
The if statements checks the condition. If it evaluates to True , it executes the
body of the if statement. If it evaluates to False , it skips the body.

if True :
print "It is true!"
>> It is true!

if False :
print "This won't get printed.."
The condition can be any valid expression:

if 2 + 2 == 4 :
print "I know math!"
>> I know math !
Chapter 15: Comparisons
Parameter Details
x First item to be compared
y Second item to be compared

Section 15.1: Chain Comparisons

You can compare multiple items with multiple comparison operators with
chain comparison. For example
x>y>z
is just a short form of:
x > y and y > z
This will evaluate to True only if both comparisons are True .
The general form is
a OP b OP c OP d ...
Where OP represents one of the multiple comparison operations you can use,
and the letters represent arbitrary valid expressions.

Note that 0 != 1 != 0 evaluates to True , even though 0 != 0 is False . Unlike the

common mathematical notation in which x != y != z means that x, y and z
have different values. Chaining == operations has the natural meaning in
most cases, since equality is generally transitive.

Style
There is no theoretical limit on how many items and comparison operations
you use as long you have proper syntax:
1 > 1 < 2 > 0.5 < 100 != 24
The above returns True if each comparison returns True . However, using
convoluted chaining is not a good style. A good chaining will be
"directional", not more complicated than
1 > x > 4 > y != 8
Side effects
As soon as one comparison returns False , the expression evaluates
immediately to False , skipping all remaining comparisons.
Note that the expression exp in a > exp > b will be evaluated only once,
whereas in the case of
a > exp and exp > b exp will be computed twice if a > exp is true.

Section 15.2: Comparison by `is` vs `==`

A common pitfall is confusing the equality comparison operators is and ==.

a == b compares the value of a and b.
a is b will compare the identities of a and b.
To illustrate:

a = 'Python is fun!'
b = 'Python is fun!'
a == b # returns True
a is b # returns False

a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
b = a # b references a
a == b # True
a is b # True
b = a[:] # b now references a copy of a
a == b # True
a is b # False [!!]

Basically, is can be thought of as shorthand for id (a) == id (b).

Beyond this, there are quirks of the run-time environment that further
complicate things. Short strings and small integers will return True when
compared with is, due to the Python machine attempting to use less memory
for identical objects.

a = 'short' b = 'short' c = 5
d=5
a is b # True c is d # True

But longer strings and larger integers will be stored separately.

a = 'not so short' b = 'not so short' c = 1000

d = 1000
a is b # False
c is d # False

You should use is to test for None :

if myvar is not None : # not None

pass

if myvar is None : # None

pass

A use of is is to test for a “sentinel” (i.e. a unique object).

sentinel = object ()
def myfunc(var= sentinel): if var is sentinel:
# value wasn ’ t provided pass
else :
# value was provided pass

Section 15.3: Greater than or less than

x>y
x<y
These operators compare two types of values, they're the less than and greater
than operators. For numbers this simply compares the numerical values to see
which is larger:

12 > 4
# True
12 < 4
# False
1<4
# True

For strings they will compare lexicographically, which is similar to

alphabetical order but not quite the same.

"alpha" < "beta" # True

"gamma" > "beta" # True
"gamma" < "OMEGA" # False
In these comparisons, lowercase letters are considered 'greater than'
uppercase, which is why "gamma" < "OMEGA" is false. If they were all
uppercase it would return the expected alphabetical ordering result:
"GAMMA" < "OMEGA" # True
Each type defines it's calculation with the < and > operators differently, so
you should investigate what the operators mean with a given type before
using it.

Section 15.4: Not equal to

x != y
This returns True if x and y are not equal and otherwise returns False .

12 != 1
# True
12 != '12'
# True
'12' != '12'
# False

Section 15.5: Equal To

x == y
This expression evaluates if x and y are the same value and returns the result
as a boolean value. Generally both type and value need to match, so the int 12
is not the same as the string '12' .

12 == 12
# True
12 == 1
# False
'12' == '12'
# True
'spam' == 'spam'
# True
'spam' == 'spam '
# False
'12' == 12
# False

Note that each type has to define a function that will be used to evaluate if
two values are the same. For builtin types these functions behave as you'd
expect, and just evaluate things based on being the same value. However
custom types could define equality testing as whatever they'd like, including
always returning True or always returning False .

Section 15.6: Comparing Objects

In order to compare the equality of custom classes, you can override == and
!= by defining __eq__ and __ne__ methods. You can also override __lt__ (<
), __le__ (<= ), __gt__ (> ), and __ge__ (> ). Note that you only need to
override two comparison methods, and Python can handle the rest (== is the
same as not < and not > , etc.)

class Foo(object ):
def __init__ (self , item):
self .my_item = item
def __eq__ (self , other):
return self .my_item == other.my_item

a = Foo(5 )
b = Foo(5 )
a == b # True a != b # False a is b # False

Note that this simple comparison assumes that other (the object being
compared to) is the same object type. Comparing to another type will throw
an error:
class Bar(object ):
def __init__ (self , item):
self .other_item = item

def __eq__ (self , other):

return self .other_item == other.other_item
def __ne__ (self , other):
return self .other_item != other.other_item
c = Bar(5 )
a == c # throws AttributeError: 'Foo' object has no attribute 'other_item'
Checking isinstance () or similar will help prevent this (if desired).

Chapter 16: Loops

Parameter Details
boolean expressionexpression that can be evaluated in a boolean context, e.g.
x < 10 variable
iterable
variable name for the current element from the iterable anything that
implements iterations

As one of the most basic functions in programming, loops are an important

piece to nearly every programming language. Loops enable developers to set
certain portions of their code to repeat through a number of loops which are
referred to as iterations. This topic covers using multiple types of loops and
applications of loops in Python.

Section 16.1: Break and Continue in Loops

break statement
When a break statement executes inside a loop, control flow "breaks" out of
the loop immediately:

i=0
while i < 7 :
print (i)
if i == 4 :
print ("Breaking from loop" ) break
i += 1

The loop conditional will not be evaluated after the break statement is
executed. Note that break statements are only allowed inside loops ,
syntactically. A break statement inside a function cannot be used to
terminate loops that called that function.
Executing the following prints every digit until number 4 when the break
statement is met and the loop stops:

0
1
2
3
4
Breaking from loop

break statements can also be used inside for loops, the other looping
construct provided by Python:

for i in (0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ): print (i)

if i == 2 :

break
Executing this loop now prints:

0
1
2

Note that 3 and 4 are not printed since the loop has ended. If a loop has an
else clause, it does not execute when the loop is terminated through a break
statement.
continue statement
A continue statement will skip to the next iteration of the loop bypassing the
rest of the current block but continuing the loop. As with break , continue
can only appear inside loops:
for i in (0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ): if i == 2 or i == 4 : continue
print (i)

0
1
3
5
Note that 2 and 4 aren't printed, this is because continue goes to the next
iteration instead of continuing on to print (i) when i == 2 or i == 4 .
Nested Loops
break and continue only operate on a single level of loop. The following
example will only break out of the inner for loop, not the outer while loop:
while True :
for i in range (1 , 5 ):
if i == 2 :
break # Will only break out of the inner loop!
Python doesn't have the ability to break out of multiple levels of loop at once
-- if this behavior is desired, refactoring one or more loops into a function and
replacing break with return may be the way to go.
Use return from within a function as a break
The return statement exits from a function, without executing the code that
comes after it.
If you have a loop inside a function, using return from inside that loop is
equivalent to having a break as the rest of the code of the loop is not
executed (note that any code after the loop is not executed either ):
def break_loop():
for i in range (1 , 5 ): if (i == 2 ): return (i) print (i)
return (5 )
If you have nested loops, the return statement will break all loops:
def break_all():
for j in range (1 , 5 ): for i in range (1 , 4 ):

if i*j == 6 : return (i)

print (i*j)

will output:

1 # 1*1
2 # 1*2
3 # 1*3
4 # 1*4
2 # 2*1
4 # 2*2
# return because 2*3 = 6, the remaining iterations of both loops are not
executed

Section 16.2: For loops

for loops iterate over a collection of items, such as list or dict , and run a
block of code with each element from the collection.
for i in [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]: print (i)
The above for loop iterates over a list of numbers.
Each iteration sets the value of i to the next element of the list. So first it will
be 0, then 1, then 2, etc. The output will be as follow:

0
1
2
3
4

range is a function that returns a series of numbers under an iterable form,

thus it can be used in for loops:
for i in range (5 ): print (i)
gives the exact same result as the first for loop. Note that 5 is not printed as
the range here is the first five numbers counting from 0.
Iterable objects and iterators

for loop can iterate on any iterable object which is an object which defines a
__getitem__ or a __iter__ function. The __iter__ function returns an iterator,
which is an object with a next function that is used to access the next element
of the iterable.

Section 16.3: Iterating over lists

To iterate through a list you can use for :
for x in ['one' , 'two' , 'three' , 'four' ]: print (x)
This will print out the elements of the list:

one
two
three four

The range function generates numbers which are also often used in a for loop.
for x in range (1 , 6 ): print (x)
The result will be a special range sequence type in python >=3 and a list in
python <=2. Both can be looped through using the for loop.

1
2
3
4
5

If you want to loop though both the elements of a list and have an index for
the elements as well, you can use Python's enumerate function:
for index, item in enumerate (['one' , 'two' , 'three' , 'four' ]): print (index, '::' ,
enumerate will generate tuples, which are unpacked into index (an integer)
and item (the actual value from the list). The above loop will print

( 0 , '::' , 'one' ) (1 , '::' , 'two' ) (2 , '::' , 'three' ) (3 , '::' , 'four' )

Iterate over a list with value manipulation using map and lambda , i.e. apply
lambda function on each element in the list:
x = map (lambda e : e.upper(), ['one' , 'two' , 'three' , 'four' ]) print (x)
Output:
['ONE' , 'TWO' , 'THREE' , 'FOUR' ] # Python 2.x
NB: in Python 3.x map returns an iterator instead of a list so you in case you
need a list you have to cast the result print (list (x))

Section 16.4: Loops with an "else" clause

The for and while compound statements (loops) can optionally have an else
clause (in practice, this usage is fairly rare).
The else clause only executes after a for loop terminates by iterating to
completion, or after a while loop terminates by its conditional expression
becoming false.

for i in range (3 ): print (i)

else :
print ('done' )

i=0

while i < 3 :
print (i)
i += 1

else :
print ('done' )
output:

0
1
2
done

The else clause does not execute if the loop terminates some other way
(through a break statement or by raising an exception):

for i in range (2 ): print (i)

if i == 1 :

break
else :
print ('done' ) output:
01
Most other programming languages lack this optional else clause of loops.
The use of the keyword else in particular is often considered confusing.

The original concept for such a clause dates back to Donald Knuth and the
meaning of the else keyword becomes clear if we rewrite a loop in terms of if
statements and goto statements from earlier days before structured
programming or from a lower-level assembly language.

For example:
while loop_condition(): ...
if break_condition():

break
...
is equivalent to:
# pseudocode

<< start>> :
if loop_condition(): ...
if break_condition(): goto << end>>
...
goto << start>>

<< end>> :
These remain equivalent if we attach an else clause to each of them.
For example:

while loop_condition(): ...

if break_condition():

break

...
else :
print ('done' )

is equivalent to:
# pseudocode

<< start>> :
if loop_condition(): ...
if break_condition(): goto << end>>
...
goto << start>>
else :
print ('done' )
<< end>> :
A for loop with an else clause can be understood the same way.
Conceptually, there is a loop condition that remains True as long as the
iterable object or sequence still has some remaining elements.
Why would one use this strange construct?
The main use case for the for ...else construct is a concise implementation of
search as for instance:
a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
for i in a:
if type (i) is not int : print (i)
break
else :
print ("no exception" )
To make the else in this construct less confusing one can think of it as "if not
break " or "if not found ".
Some discussions on this can be found in [Python-ideas] Summary of
for...else threads , Why does python use 'else' after for and while loops? , and
Else Clauses on Loop Statements

Section 16.5: The Pass Statement

pass is a null statement for when a statement is required by Python syntax

(such as within the body of a for or while loop), but no action is required or
desired by the programmer. This can be useful as a placeholder for code that
is yet to be written.

for x in range (10 ):

pass #we don't want to do anything, or are not ready to do anything here, so
we'll pass
In this example, nothing will happen. The for loop will complete without
error, but no commands or code will be actioned. pass allows us to run our
code successfully without having all commands and action fully
implemented.
Similarly, pass can be used in while loops, as well as in selections and
function definitions etc.
while x == y: pass
Section 16.6: Iterating over dictionaries

Considering the following dictionary:

d = {"a" : 1 , "b" : 2 , "c" : 3 }
To iterate through its keys, you can use:
for key in d:
print (key)
Output:

"a"
"b"
"c"

This is equivalent to:

for key in d.keys():
print (key)
or in Python 2:
for key in d.iterkeys():
print (key)
To iterate through its values, use:
for value in d.values():
print (value)
Output:

1
2
3

To iterate through its keys and values, use:

for key, value in d.items():
print (key, "::" , value)
Output:

a :: 1
b :: 2
c :: 3

Note that in Python 2, .keys(), .values() and .items() return a list object. If
you simply need to iterate through the result, you can use the equivalent
.iterkeys(), .itervalues() and .iteritems().

The difference between .keys() and .iterkeys(), .values() and .itervalues(),

.items() and .iteritems() is that the iter * methods are generators. Thus, the
elements within the dictionary are yielded one by one as they are evaluated.
When a list object is returned, all of the elements are packed into a list and
then returned for further evaluation.

Note also that in Python 3, Order of items printed in the above manner does
not follow any order.

Section 16.7: The "half loop" do-while

Unlike other languages, Python doesn't have a do-until or a do-while

construct (this will allow code to be executed once before the condition is
tested). However, you can combine a while True with a break to achieve the
same purpose.

a = 10
while True :
a = a1
print (a)
if a< 7 :
break print ('Done.' )

This will print:

9
8
7
6
Done.

Section 16.8: Looping and Unpacking

If you want to loop over a list of tuples for example:

collection = [('a' , 'b' , 'c' ), ('x' , 'y' , 'z' ), ('1' , '2' , '3' )]
instead of doing something like this:

for item in collection:

i1 = item[0 ]
i2 = item[1 ]
i3 = item[2 ]
# logic

or something like this:

for item in collection: i1, i2, i3 = item # logic

You can simply do this:

for i1, i2, i3 in collection: # logic
This will also work for most types of iterables, not just tuples.

Section 16.9: Iterating di ☐ erent portion of a list with di ☐ erent

step size

Suppose you have a long list of elements and you are only interested in every
other element of the list. Perhaps you only want to examine the first or last
elements, or a specific range of entries in your list. Python has strong
indexing built-in capabilities. Here are some examples of how to achieve
these scenarios.

Here's a simple list that will be used throughout the examples:

lst = ['alpha' , 'bravo' , 'charlie' , 'delta' , 'echo' ]
Iteration over the whole list
To iterate over each element in the list, a for loop like below can be used:
for s in lst:
print s[:1 ] # print the first letter
The for loop assigns s for each element of lst. This will print:

abcde

Often you need both the element and the index of that element. The
enumerate keyword performs that task.
for idx, s in enumerate (lst):
print ("%s has an index of %d" % (s, idx))
The index idx will start with zero and increment for each iteration, while the s
will contain the element being processed. The previous snippet will output:

alpha has an index of 0 bravo has an index of 1 charlie has an index of 2 delta
has an index of 3 echo has an index of 4

Iterate over sub-list

If we want to iterate over a range (remembering that Python uses zero-based
indexing), use the range keyword.
for i in range (2 , 4 ):
print ("lst at %d contains %s" % (i, lst[i]))
This would output:
lst at 2 contains charlie lst at 3 contains delta
The list may also be sliced. The following slice notation goes from element at
index 1 to the end with a step of 2. The two for loops give the same result.
for s in lst[1 ::2 ]: print (s)
for i in range (1 , len (lst), 2 ): print (lst[i])
The above snippet outputs:
bravo delta Indexing and slicing is a topic of its own.

Section 16.10: While Loop

A while loop will cause the loop statements to be executed until the loop
condition is falsey. The following code will execute the loop statements a
total of 4 times.

i=0
while i < 4 :
#loop statements
i=i+1

While the above loop can easily be translated into a more elegant for loop,
while loops are useful for checking if some condition has been met. The
following loop will continue to execute until myObject is ready.
myObject = anObject()
while myObject.isNotReady(): myObject.tryToGetReady() while loops can
also run without a condition by using numbers (complex or real) or True :
import cmath

complex_num = cmath .sqrt(1 )

while complex_num: # You can also replace complex_num with any number,
True or a value of any type

print (complex_num) # Prints 1j forever

If the condition is always true the while loop will run forever (infinite loop) if
it is not terminated by a break or return statement or an exception.
while True :
print "Infinite loop"

# Infinite loop # Infinite loop # Infinite loop # ...

Chapter 17: Arrays

Parameter Details
b Represents signed integer of size 1 byte
B Represents unsigned integer of size 1 byte
c Represents character of size 1 byte
u Represents unicode character of size 2 bytes
h Represents signed integer of size 2 bytes
H Represents unsigned integer of size 2 bytes
i Represents signed integer of size 2 bytes
I Represents unsigned integer of size 2 bytes
w Represents unicode character of size 4 bytes
l Represents signed integer of size 4 bytes
L Represents unsigned integer of size 4 bytes
f Represents floating point of size 4 bytes
d Represents floating point of size 8 bytes
"Arrays" in Python are not the arrays in conventional programming languages
like C and Java, but closer to lists. A list can be a collection of either
homogeneous or heterogeneous elements, and may contain ints, strings or
other lists.
Section 17.1: Access individual elements through indexes

Individual elements can be accessed through indexes. Python arrays are zero-
indexed. Here is an example:

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

print (my_array[1 ])
#2
print (my_array[2 ])
#3
print (my_array[0 ])
#1

Section 17.2: Basic Introduction to Arrays

An array is a data structure that stores values of same data type. In Python,
this is the main difference between arrays and lists.
While python lists can contain values corresponding to different data types,
arrays in python can only contain values corresponding to same data type. In
this tutorial, we will understand the Python arrays with few examples.
If you are new to Python, get started with the Python Introduction article.
To use arrays in python language, you need to import the standard array
module. This is because array is not a fundamental data type like strings,
integer etc. Here is how you can import array module in python :
from array import *
Once you have imported the array module, you can declare an array. Here is
how you do it:
arrayIdentifierName = array (typecode, [Initializers])
In the declaration above, arrayIdentifierName is the name of array, typecode
lets python know the type of array and Initializers are the values with which
array is initialized.
Typecodes are the codes that are used to define the type of array values or the
type of array. The table in the parameters section shows the possible values
you can use when declaring an array and it's type.
Here is a real world example of python array declaration :
my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ])
In the example above, typecode used is i. This typecode represents signed
integer whose size is 2 bytes.
Here is a simple example of an array containing 5 integers

from array import *

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]) for i in my_array:

print (i)
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5

Section 17.3: Append any value to the array using append()

method

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]) my_array.append(6 )

# array('i', [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])

Note that the value 6 was appended to the existing array values.

Section 17.4: Insert value in an array using insert() method

We can use the insert() method to insert a value at any index of the array.
Here is an example :

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

my_array.insert(0 , 0 )
#array('i', [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5])

In the above example, the value 0 was inserted at index 0. Note that the first
argument is the index while second argument is the value.

Section 17.5: Extend python array using extend() method

A python array can be extended with more than one value using extend()
method. Here is an example :
my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])
my_extnd_array = array ('i' , [7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ])
my_array.extend(my_extnd_array)
# array('i', [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10])

We see that the array my_array was extended with values from
my_extnd_array.

Section 17.6: Add items from list into array using fromlist()
method

Here is an example:

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]) c= [11 , 12 , 13 ]

my_array.fromlist(c)
# array('i', [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 13])

So we see that the values 11,12 and 13 were added from list c to my_array.

Section 17.7: Remove any array element using remove()

method
Here is an example :

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

my_array.remove(4 )
# array('i', [1, 2, 3, 5])

We see that the element 4 was removed from the array.

Section 17.8: Remove last array element using pop() method

pop removes the last element from the array. Here is an example :

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

my_array.pop()
# array('i', [1, 2, 3, 4])
So we see that the last element (5) was popped out of array.

Section 17.9: Fetch any element through its index using index()
method
index() returns first index of the matching value. Remember that arrays are
zero-indexed.

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]) print (my_array.index(5 ))

#5
my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 5 ]) print (my_array.index(3 ))
#3

Note in that second example that only one index was returned, even though
the value exists twice in the array

Section 17.10: Reverse a python array using reverse() method

The reverse() method does what the name says it will do - reverses the array.
Here is an example :

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

my_array.reverse()
# array('i', [5, 4, 3, 2, 1])

Section 17.11: Get array bu ☐ er information through bu ☐

er_info() method
This method provides you the array buffer start address in memory and
number of elements in array. Here is an example:

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]) my_array.buffer_info()

(33881712 , 5 )

Section 17.12: Check for number of occurrences of an element

using count() method
count() will return the number of times and element appears in an array. In
the following example we see that the value 3 occurs twice.

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 5 ]) my_array.count(3 )

#2

Section 17.13: Convert array to string using tostring() method

tostring() converts the array to a string.

my_char_array = array ('c' , ['g' , 'e' , 'e' , 'k' ])

# array('c', 'geek')
print (my_char_array.tostring())
# geek

Section 17.14: Convert array to a python list with same

elements using tolist() method
When you need a Python list object, you can utilize the tolist() method to
convert your array to a list.

my_array = array ('i' , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

c = my_array.tolist()
# [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Section 17.15: Append a string to char array using fromstring()

method
You are able to append a string to a character array using fromstring()

my_char_array = array ('c' , ['g' , 'e' , 'e' , 'k' ]) my_char_array.fromstring("stuff"

print (my_char_array)
#array('c', 'geekstuff')

Chapter 18: Multidimensional arrays

Section 18.1: Lists in lists

A good way to visualize a 2d array is as a list of lists. Something like this:

lst= [[1 , 2 , 3 ], [4 , 5 , 6 ], [7 , 8 , 9 ]]

here the outer list lst has three things in it. each of those things is another list:
The first one is: [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] , the second one is: [ 4 , 5 , 6 ] and the third one is:
. You can access these lists the same way you would access another other
element of a list, like this:

print (lst[0 ])
#output: [1, 2, 3]
print (lst[1 ])
#output: [4, 5, 6]
print (lst[2 ])
#output: [7, 8, 9]
You can then access the different elements in each of those lists the same
way:
print (lst[0 ][0 ])
#output: 1
print (lst[0 ][1 ])
#output: 2

Here the first number inside the [] brackets means get the list in that position.
In the above example we used the number 0 to mean get the list in the 0th
position which is [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] . The second set of [] brackets means get the item in
that position from the inner list. In this case we used both 0 and 1 the 0th
position in the list we got is the number 1 and in the 1st position it is 2

You can also set values inside these lists the same way:
lst[0 ]= [10 , 11 , 12 ]
Now the list is [[ 10 , 11 , 12 ],[ 4 , 5 , 6 ],[ 7 , 8 , 9 ]] . In this example we changed the
whole first list to be a completely new list.
lst[1 ][2 ]= 15

Now the list is [[ 10 , 11 , 12 ],[ 4 , 5 , 15 ],[ 7 , 8 , 9 ]] . In this example we changed a

single element inside of one of the inner lists. First we went into the list at
position 1 and changed the element within it at position 2, which was 6 now
it's 15.

Section 18.2: Lists in lists in lists in..

This behaviour can be extended. Here is a 3-dimensional array:

[[[ 111 , 112 , 113 ],[ 121 , 122 , 123 ],[ 131 , 132 , 133 ]],[[ 211 , 212 , 213 ],[
[ 231 , 232 , 233 ]],[[ 311 , 312 , 313 ],[ 321 , 322 , 323 ],[ 331 , 332 , 333 ]]]
As is probably obvious, this gets a bit hard to read. Use backslashes to break
up the different dimensions:

[[[ 111 , 112 , 113 ], [121 , 122 , 123 ], [131 , 132 , 133 ]], \ [[211 , 212 , 213 ]
222 , 223 ], [231 , 232 , 233 ]], \ [[311 , 312 , 313 ], [321 , 322 , 323 ], [331 , 332
]]]

By nesting the lists like this, you can extend to arbitrarily high dimensions.
Accessing is similar to 2D arrays:

print (myarray)
print (myarray[1 ])
print (myarray[2 ][1 ]) print (myarray[1 ][0 ][2 ]) etc.

And editing is also similar:

myarray[ 1 ]= new_n1 _d_list

myarray[2 ][1 ]= new_n2 _d_list
myarray[1 ][0 ][2 ]= new_n3 _d_list #or a single number if you're dealing
with 3D arrays etc.

Chapter 19: Dictionary

Parameter Details
key The desired key to lookup
value The value to set or return

Section 19.1: Introduction to Dictionary

A dictionary is an example of a key value store also known as Mapping in

Python. It allows you to store and retrieve elements by referencing a key. As
dictionaries are referenced by key, they have very fast lookups. As they are
primarily used for referencing items by key, they are not sorted.

creating a dict
Dictionaries can be initiated in many ways:
literal syntax
d = {} # empty dict
d = {'key' : 'value' } # dict with initial values
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5
# Also unpacking one or multiple dictionaries with the literal syntax is
possible

# makes a shallow copy of otherdict

d = {**otherdict}
# also updates the shallow copy with the contents of the yetanotherdict.
d = {**otherdict, **yetanotherdict}

dict comprehension
d = {k:v for k, v in [('key' , 'value' , )]}
see also: Comprehensions
built-in class: dict ()

d = dict () # empty dict

d = dict (key= 'value' ) # explicit keyword arguments
d = dict ([('key' , 'value' )]) # passing in a list of key/value pairs # make a
shallow copy of another dict (only possible if keys are only strings!) d = dict
(**otherdict)

modifying a dict
To add items to a dictionary, simply create a new key with a value:
d['newkey' ] = 42
It also possible to add list and dictionary as value:
d['new_list' ] = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
d['new_dict' ] = {'nested_dict' : 1 }
To delete an item, delete the key from the dictionary: del d['newkey' ]

Section 19.2: Avoiding KeyError Exceptions

One common pitfall when using dictionaries is to access a non-existent key.
This typically results in a KeyError exception
mydict = {}
mydict['not there' ]

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
KeyError : 'not there'

One way to avoid key errors is to use the dict .get method, which allows you
to specify a default value to return in the case of an absent key.
value = mydict.get(key, default_value)

Which returns mydict[key] if it exists, but otherwise returns default_value.

Note that this doesn't add key to mydict. So if you want to retain that key
value pair, you should use mydict.setdefault(key, default_value), which does
store the key value pair.

mydict = {}
print (mydict)
# {}
print (mydict.get("foo" , "bar" )) # bar
print (mydict)
# {}
print (mydict.setdefault("foo" , "bar" )) # bar
print (mydict)
# {'foo': 'bar'}

An alternative way to deal with the problem is catching the exception

try : value = mydict[key]

except KeyError :
value = default_value

You could also check if the key is in the dictionary.

if key in mydict:
value = mydict[key]
else :
value = default_value

Do note, however, that in multi-threaded environments it is possible for the

key to be removed from the dictionary after you check, creating a race
condition where the exception can still be thrown.
Another option is to use a subclass of dict, collections.defaultdict, that has a
default_factory to create new entries in the dict when given a new_key.

Section 19.3: Iterating Over a Dictionary

If you use a dictionary as an iterator (e.g. in a for statement), it traverses the

keys of the dictionary. For example:
d = {'a' : 1 , 'b' : 2 , 'c' :3 } for key in d:
print (key, d[key])

#c3
#b2
#a1

The same is true when used in a comprehension

print ([key for key in d]) # ['c', 'b', 'a']
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
The items() method can be used to loop over both the key and value
simultaneously:

for key, value in d.items(): print (key, value)

#c3
#b2
#a1

While the values() method can be used to iterate over only the values, as
would be expected:

for key, value in d.values(): print (key, value)

#3
#2
#1
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.2
Here, the methods keys(), values() and items() return lists, and there are the
three extra methods iterkeys() itervalues() and iteritems() to return iterators.

Section 19.4: Dictionary with default values

Available in the standard library as defaultdict
from collections import defaultdict

d = defaultdict(int )
d['key' ] # 0
d['key' ] = 5
d['key' ] # 5

d = defaultdict(lambda : 'empty' )
d['key' ] # 'empty'
d['key' ] = 'full'
d['key' ] # 'full'

[*] Alternatively, if you must use the built-in dict class, using dict
.setdefault() will allow you to create a default whenever you access a key that
did not exist before:

>>> d = {}
{}
>>> d.setdefault('Another_key' , []).append("This worked!" ) >>> d

{'Another_key' : ['This worked!' ]}

Keep in mind that if you have many values to add, dict .setdefault() will
create a new instance of the initial value (in this example a []) every time it's
called - which may create unnecessary workloads.
[*] Python Cookbook, 3rd edition, by David Beazley and Brian K. Jones (O
’Reilly). Copyright 2013 David Beazley and Brian Jones, 978-1-449-34037-
7.

Section 19.5: Merging dictionaries

Consider the following dictionaries:
>>> fish = {'name' : "Nemo" , 'hands' : "fins" , 'special' : "gills" } >>> dog =
{'name' : "Clifford" , 'hands' : "paws" , 'color' : "red" } Python 3.5+

>>> fishdog = {**fish, **dog}

>>> fishdog
{'hands' : 'paws' , 'color' : 'red' , 'name' : 'Clifford' , 'special' : 'gills' }

As this example demonstrates, duplicate keys map to their lattermost value

(for example "Clifford" overrides "Nemo").
Python 3.3+

>>> from collections import ChainMap

>>> dict (ChainMap(fish, dog))
{'hands' : 'fins' , 'color' : 'red' , 'special' : 'gills' , 'name' : 'Nemo' }

With this technique the foremost value takes precedence for a given key
rather than the last ("Clifford" is thrown out in favor of "Nemo").
Python 2.x, 3.x

>>> from itertools import chain

>>> dict (chain(fish.items(), dog.items()))
{'hands' : 'paws' , 'color' : 'red' , 'name' : 'Clifford' , 'special' : 'gills' }

This uses the lattermost value, as with the **-based technique for merging
("Clifford" overrides "Nemo").

>>> fish.update(dog)
>>> fish
{'color' : 'red' , 'hands' : 'paws' , 'name' : 'Clifford' , 'special' : 'gills' }

dict .update uses the latter dict to overwrite the previous one.

Section 19.6: Accessing keys and values

When working with dictionaries, it's often necessary to access all the keys
and values in the dictionary, either in a for loop, a list comprehension, or just
as a plain list.
Given a dictionary like:
mydict = {
'a' : '1' ,
'b' : '2' }
You can get a list of keys using the keys() method:

print (mydict.keys())
# Python2: ['a', 'b']
# Python3: dict_keys(['b', 'a'])

If instead you want a list of values, use the values() method:

print (mydict.values())
# Python2: ['1', '2']
# Python3: dict_values(['2', '1'])

If you want to work with both the key and its corresponding value, you can
use the items() method:

print (mydict.items())
# Python2: [('a', '1'), ('b', '2')]
# Python3: dict_items([('b', '2'), ('a', '1')])

NOTE: Because a dict is unsorted, keys(), values(), and items() have no sort
order. Use sort(), sorted (), or an OrderedDict if you care about the order that
these methods return.

Python 2/3 Difference: In Python 3, these methods return special iterable

objects, not lists, and are the equivalent of the Python 2 iterkeys(),
itervalues(), and iteritems() methods. These objects can be used like lists for
the most part, though there are some differences. See PEP 3106 for more
details.

Section 19.7: Accessing values of a dictionary

dictionary = {"Hello" : 1234 , "World" : 5678 }
print (dictionary["Hello" ])
The above code will print 1234 .
The string "Hello" in this example is called a key . It is used to lookup a value
in the dict by placing the key in square brackets.
The number 1234 is seen after the respective colon in the dict definition. This
is called the value that "Hello" maps to in this dict .

Looking up a value like this with a key that does not exist will raise a
KeyError exception, halting execution if uncaught. If we want to access a
value without risking a KeyError , we can use the dictionary.get method. By
default if the key does not exist, the method will return None . We can pass it
a second value to return instead of None in the event of a failed lookup.

w = dictionary.get("whatever" )
x = dictionary.get("whatever" , "nuh-uh" ) In this example w will get the value
None and x will get the value "nuh-uh" .

Section 19.8: Creating a dictionary

Rules for creating a dictionary:

Every key must be unique (otherwise it will be overridden)
Every key must be hashable (can use the hash function to hash it; otherwise
TypeError will be thrown) There is no particular order for the keys.

# Creating and populating it with values stock = {'eggs' : 5 , 'milk' : 2 }

# Or creating an empty dictionary dictionary = {}

# And populating it after dictionary['eggs' ] = 5

dictionary['milk' ] = 2

# Values can also be lists

mydict = {'a' : [1 , 2 , 3 ], 'b' : ['one' , 'two' , 'three' ]}

# Use list.append() method to add new elements to the values list

mydict['a' ].append(4 ) # => {'a': [1, 2, 3, 4], 'b': ['one', 'two', 'three']}
mydict['b' ].append('four' ) # => {'a': [1, 2, 3, 4], 'b': ['one', 'two', 'three',
'four']}

# We can also create a dictionary using a list of two-items tuples iterable =

[('eggs' , 5 ), ('milk' , 2 )]
dictionary = dict (iterables)

# Or using keyword argument: dictionary = dict (eggs= 5 , milk= 2 )

# Another way will be to use the dict.fromkeys:

dictionary = dict .fromkeys((milk, eggs)) # => {'milk': None, 'eggs': None}
dictionary = dict .fromkeys((milk, eggs), (2 , 5 )) # => {'milk': 2, 'eggs': 5}

Section 19.9: Creating an ordered dictionary

You can create an ordered dictionary which will follow a determined order
when iterating over the keys in the dictionary.
Use OrderedDict from the collections module. This will always return the
dictionary elements in the original insertion order when iterated over.
from collections import OrderedDict

d = OrderedDict() d['first' ] = 1 d['second' ] = 2 d['third' ] = 3 d['last' ] = 4

# Outputs "first 1", "second 2", "third 3", "last 4" for key in d:
print (key, d[key])

Section 19.10: Unpacking dictionaries using the ** operator

You can use the ** keyword argument unpacking operator to deliver the key-
value pairs in a dictionary into a function's arguments. A simplified example
from the official documentation :
>>>

>>> def parrot(voltage, state, action):

... print ("This parrot wouldn't" , action, end= ' ' )
... print ("if you put" , voltage, "volts through it." , end= ' ' ) ... print ("E's" ,
state, "!" )
...
>>> d = {"voltage" : "four million" , "state" : "bleedin' demised" , "action" :
"VOOM" } >>> parrot(**d)

This parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it. E' s
bleedin' demised !
As of Python 3.5 you can also use this syntax to merge an arbitrary number
of dict objects.

>>> fish = {'name' : "Nemo" , 'hands' : "fins" , 'special' : "gills" } >>> dog =
{'name' : "Clifford" , 'hands' : "paws" , 'color' : "red" } >>> fishdog = {**fish,
**dog}
>>> fishdog

{'hands' : 'paws' , 'color' : 'red' , 'name' : 'Clifford' , 'special' : 'gills' }

As this example demonstrates, duplicate keys map to their lattermost value
(for example "Clifford" overrides "Nemo").

Section 19.11: The trailing comma

Like lists and tuples, you can include a trailing comma in your dictionary.
role = {"By day" : "A typical programmer" ,
"By night" : "Still a typical programmer" , } PEP 8 dictates that you should
leave a space between the trailing comma and the closing brace.

Section 19.12: The dict() constructor

The dict () constructor can be used to create dictionaries from keyword
arguments, or from a single iterable of key-value pairs, or from a single
dictionary and keyword arguments.

dict (a= 1 , b= 2 , c= 3 ) # {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3} dict ([('d' , 4 ), ('e' , 5 ), ('f' , 6 )])
4, 'e': 5, 'f': 6} dict ([('a' , 1 )], b= 2 , c= 3 ) # {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3} dict ({'a' : 1 ,
2 }, c= 3 ) # {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3}

Section 19.13: Dictionaries Example

Dictionaries map keys to values.

car = {}
car["wheels" ] = 4
car["color" ] = "Red"
car["model" ] = "Corvette"
Dictionary values can be accessed by their keys.
print "Little " + car["color" ] + " " + car["model" ] + "!" # This would print
out "Little Red Corvette!"
Dictionaries can also be created in a JSON style:
car = {"wheels" : 4 , "color" : "Red" , "model" : "Corvette" }
Dictionary values can be iterated over:
for key in car:
print key + ": " + car[key]

# wheels: 4
# color: Red
# model: Corvette

Section 19.14: All combinations of dictionary values

options = {
"x" : ["a" , "b" ],
"y" : [10 , 20 , 30 ]

Given a dictionary such as the one shown above, where there is a list
representing a set of values to explore for the corresponding key. Suppose
you want to explore "x" = "a" with "y" = 10 , then "x" = "a" with"y" = 10 , and so
on until you have explored all possible combinations.

You can create a list that returns all such combinations of values using the
following code.
import itertools

options = {
"x" : ["a" , "b" ], "y" : [10 , 20 , 30 ]}

keys = options.keys()
values = (options[key] for key in keys)
combinations = [dict (zip (keys, combination)) for combination in itertools
.product(*values)] print combinations
This gives us the following list stored in the variable combinations:

[{ 'x' : 'a' , 'y' : 10 }, {'x' : 'b' , 'y' : 10 }, {'x' : 'a' , 'y' : 20 }, {'x' : 'b' , 'y' : 20 }, {
'a' , 'y' : 30 }, {'x' : 'b' , 'y' : 30 }]

Chapter 20: List

The Python List is a general data structure widely used in Python programs.
They are found in other languages, often referred to as dynamic arrays . They
are both mutable and a sequence data type that allows them to be indexed and
sliced . The list can contain different types of objects, including other list
objects.

Section 20.1: List methods and supported operators

Starting with a given list a:
a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
1. append(value) – appends a new element to the end of the list.

# Append values 6, 7, and 7 to the list

a.append(6 )
a.append(7 )
a.append(7 )
# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7]

# Append another list

b = [8 , 9 ]
a.append(b)
# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, [8, 9]]

# Append an element of a different type, as list elements do not need to have

the same type my_string = "hello world"
a.append(my_string)
# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, [8, 9], "hello world"]

Note that the append() method only appends one new element to the end of
the list. If you append a list to another list, the list that you append becomes a
single element at the end of the first list.

# Appending a list to another list a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 7 ]

b = [8 , 9 ]
a.append(b)
# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, [8, 9]] a[8 ]
# Returns: [8,9]

2. extend(enumerable) – extends the list by appending elements from another

enumerable.
a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 7 ] b = [8 , 9 , 10 ]

# Extend list by appending all elements from b a.extend(b)

# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10]

# Extend list with elements from a non-list enumerable: a.extend(range (3 ))

# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 0, 1, 2]

Lists can also be concatenated with the + operator. Note that this does not
modify any of the original lists:
a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ] + [7 , 7 ] + b # a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10]

3. index(value, [startIndex]) – gets the index of the first occurrence of the

input value. If the input value is not in the list a ValueError exception is
raised. If a second argument is provided, the search is started at that specified
index.

a.index(7 ) # Returns: 6
a.index(49 ) # ValueError, because 49 is not in a.
a.index(7 , 7 ) # Returns: 7
a.index(7 , 8 ) # ValueError, because there is no 7 starting at index 8
4. insert(index, value) – inserts value just before the specified index. Thus
after the insertion the new element occupies position index.

a.insert( 0 , 0 ) # insert 0 at position 0

a.insert(2 , 5 ) # insert 5 at position 2
# a: [0, 1, 5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10]
5. pop([index]) – removes and returns the item at index. With no argument it
removes and returns the last element of the list.

a.pop( 2 )
# Returns: 5
# a: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10] a.pop(8 )
# Returns: 7
# a: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

# With no argument:
a.pop()
# Returns: 10
# a: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

6. remove(value) – removes the first occurrence of the specified value. If the

provided value cannot be found, a ValueError is raised.

a.remove( 0 )
a.remove(9 )
# a: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] a.remove(10 )
# ValueError, because 10 is not in a

7. reverse() – reverses the list in-place and returns None .

a.reverse()
# a: [8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
There are also other ways of reversing a list. 8. count(value) – counts the
number of occurrences of some value in the list.
a.count(7 ) # Returns: 2
9. sort() – sorts the list in numerical and lexicographical order and returns
None .

a.sort()
# a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] # Sorts the list in numerical order

Lists can also be reversed when sorted using the reverse= True flag in the
sort() method.
a.sort(reverse= True )
# a = [8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]
If you want to sort by attributes of items, you can use the key keyword
argument:
import datetime

class Person(object ):
def __init__ (self , name, birthday, height): self .name = name
self .birthday = birthday
self .height = height

def __repr__ (self ): return self .name

l = [Person("John Cena" , datetime .date(1992 , 9 , 12 ), 175 ), Person("Chuck

Norris" , datetime .date(1990 , 8 , 28 ), 180 ), Person("Jon Skeet" , datetime
.date(1991 , 7 , 6 ), 185 )]

l.sort(key= lambda item: item.name) # l: [Chuck Norris, John Cena, Jon

Skeet]
l.sort(key= lambda item: item.birthday) # l: [Chuck Norris, Jon Skeet, John
Cena]
l.sort(key= lambda item: item.height) # l: [John Cena, Chuck Norris, Jon
Skeet]
In case of list of dicts the concept is the same:
import datetime

l = [{'name' :'John Cena' , 'birthday' : datetime .date(1992 , 9 , 12 ), 'height' : 175

}, {'name' : 'Chuck Norris' , 'birthday' : datetime .date(1990 , 8 , 28 ), 'height' :
}, {'name' : 'Jon Skeet' , 'birthday' : datetime .date(1991 , 7 , 6 ), 'height' : 185 }]

l.sort(key= lambda item: item['name' ]) # l: [Chuck Norris, John Cena, Jon

Skeet]
l.sort(key= lambda item: item['birthday' ]) # l: [Chuck Norris, Jon Skeet,
John Cena]
l.sort(key= lambda item: item['height' ]) # l: [John Cena, Chuck Norris, Jon
Skeet]
Sort by sub dict:
import datetime
l = [{'name' :'John Cena' , 'birthday' : datetime .date(1992 , 9 , 12 ), 'size' :
{'height' : 175 , 'weight' : 100 }},
{ 'name' : 'Chuck Norris' , 'birthday' : datetime .date(1990 , 8 , 28 ), 'size' :
{'height' : 180 , 'weight' : 90 }},
{'name' : 'Jon Skeet' , 'birthday' : datetime .date(1991 , 7 , 6 ), 'size' : {'height' :
185 , 'weight' : 110 }}]

l.sort(key= lambda item: item['size' ]['height' ]) # l: [John Cena, Chuck

Norris, Jon Skeet]
Better way to sort using attrgetter and itemgetter
Lists can also be sorted using attrgetter and itemgetter functions from the
operator module. These can help improve readability and reusability. Here
are some examples,
from operator import itemgetter, attrgetter

people = [{'name' :'chandan' , 'age' :20 , 'salary' :2000 }, {'name' :'chetan' , 'age'
:18 , 'salary' :5000 }, {'name' :'guru' , 'age' :30 , 'salary' :3000 }]

by_age = itemgetter('age' )
by_salary = itemgetter('salary' )
people.sort(key= by_age) #in-place sorting by age people.sort(key=
by_salary) #in-place sorting by salary
itemgetter can also be given an index. This is helpful if you want to sort
based on indices of a tuple.

list_of_tuples = [(1 , 2 ), (3 , 4 ), (5 , 0 )] list_of_tuples.sort(key= itemgetter(1

print (list_of_tuples) #[(5, 0), (1, 2), (3, 4)]

Use the attrgetter if you want to sort by attributes of an object,

persons = [Person("John Cena" , datetime .date(1992 , 9 , 12 ), 175 ),

Person("Chuck Norris" , datetime .date(1990 , 8 , 28 ), 180 ),
Person("Jon Skeet" , datetime .date(1991 , 7 , 6 ), 185 )] #reusing Person class
from above

example

person.sort(key = attrgetter('name' )) #sort by name by_birthday =

attrgetter('birthday' )
person.sort(key= by_birthday) #sort by birthday
10. clear() – removes all items from the list
a.clear() # a = []
11. Replication – multiplying an existing list by an integer will produce a
larger list consisting of that many copies of the original. This can be useful
for example for list initialization:
b = ["blah" ] * 3
# b = ["blah", "blah", "blah"]
b = [1 , 3 , 5 ] * 5
# [1, 3, 5, 1, 3, 5, 1, 3, 5, 1, 3, 5, 1, 3, 5]
Take care doing this if your list contains references to objects (eg a list of
lists), see Common Pitfalls - List multiplication and common references.
12. Element deletion – it is possible to delete multiple elements in the list
using the del keyword and slice notation:

a = list (range (10 )) del a[::2 ]

# a = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9] del a[1 ]
# a = [1, 3, 5, 7] del a[:]
# a = []

13. Copying

The default assignment "=" assigns a reference of the original list to the new
name. That is, the original name and new name are both pointing to the same
list object. Changes made through any of them will be reflected in another.
This is often not what you intended.

b=a
a.append(6 )
# b: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

If you want to create a copy of the list you have below options.
You can slice it:
new_list = old_list[:]
You can use the built in list() function:
new_list = list (old_list)
You can use generic copy.copy():
import copy
new_list = copy .copy (old_list) #inserts references to the objects found in the
original.
This is a little slower than list() because it has to find out the datatype of
old_list first.
If the list contains objects and you want to copy them as well, use generic
copy.deepcopy():
import copy
new_list = copy .deepcopy(old_list) #inserts copies of the objects found in the
original.
Obviously the slowest and most memory-needing method, but sometimes
unavoidable.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
copy () – Returns a shallow copy of the list
aa = a.copy ()
# aa = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Section 20.2: Accessing list values

Python lists are zero-indexed, and act like arrays in other languages.

lst = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
lst[0 ] # 1
lst[1 ] # 2

Attempting to access an index outside the bounds of the list will raise an
IndexError .
lst[4 ] # IndexError: list index out of range
Negative indices are interpreted as counting from the end of the list.

lst[1 ] # 4
lst[2 ] # 3
lst[5 ] # IndexError: list index out of range

This is functionally equivalent to

lst[len (lst)1 ] # 4

Lists allow to use slice notation as lst[start:end:step]. The output of the slice
notation is a new list containing elements from index start to end1 . If options
are omitted start defaults to beginning of list, end to end of list and step to 1:
lst[ 1 :] # [2, 3, 4]
lst[:3 ] # [1, 2, 3]
lst[::2 ] # [1, 3]
lst[::1 ] # [4, 3, 2, 1]
lst[1 :0 :1 ] # [4, 3, 2]
lst[5 :8 ] # [] since starting index is greater than length of lst, returns empty
list lst[1 :10 ] # [2, 3, 4] same as omitting ending index

With this in mind, you can print a reversed version of the list by calling
lst[::1 ] # [4, 3, 2, 1]
When using step lengths of negative amounts, the starting index has to be
greater than the ending index otherwise the result will be an empty list.
lst[3 :1 :1 ] # [4, 3]
Using negative step indices are equivalent to the following code:
reversed (lst)[0 :2 ] # 0 = 1 -1 # 2 = 3 -1
The indices used are 1 less than those used in negative indexing and are
reversed.
Advanced slicing
When lists are sliced the __getitem__ () method of the list object is called,
with a slice object. Python has a builtin slice method to generate slice objects.
We can use this to store a slice and reuse it later like so,

data = 'chandan purohit 22 2000' #assuming data fields of fixed length

name_slice = slice (0 , 19 )
age_slice = slice (19 , 21 )
salary_slice = slice (22 , None )

#now we can have more readable slices print (data[name_slice]) #chandan

purohit print (data[age_slice]) #'22'
print (data[salary_slice]) #'2000'

This can be of great use by providing slicing functionality to our objects by

overriding __getitem__ in our class.

Section 20.3: Checking if list is empty

The emptiness of a list is associated to the boolean False , so you don't have
to check len (lst) == 0 , but just lst or not lst
lst = []
if not lst:
print ("list is empty" ) # Output: list is empty

Section 20.4: Iterating over a list

Python supports using a for loop directly on a list:
my_list = ['foo' , 'bar' , 'baz' ]
for item in my_list:
print (item)

# Output: foo
# Output: bar
# Output: baz

You can also get the position of each item at the same time:
for (index, item) in enumerate (my_list):
print ('The item in position {} is: {}' .format(index, item))

# Output: The item in position 0 is: foo # Output: The item in position 1 is:
bar # Output: The item in position 2 is: baz

The other way of iterating a list based on the index value:

for i in range (0 , len (my_list)): print (my_list[i])

#output:
>>>
foo
bar
baz

Note that changing items in a list while iterating on it may have unexpected
results:

for item in my_list: if item == 'foo' : del my_list[0 ] print (item)

# Output: foo # Output: baz In this last example, we deleted the first item at
the first iteration, but that caused bar to be skipped.

Section 20.5: Checking whether an item is in a list

Python makes it very simple to check whether an item is in a list. Simply use
the in operator.
lst = ['test' , 'twest' , 'tweast' , 'treast' ]
'test' in lst
# Out: True
'toast' in lst
# Out: False

Note: the in operator on sets is asymptotically faster than on lists. If you need
to use it many times on potentially large lists, you may want to convert your
list to a set , and test the presence of elements on the set .

slst = set (lst) 'test' in slst # Out: True

Section 20.6: Any and All

You can use all () to determine if all the values in an iterable evaluate to True

nums = [1 , 1 , 0 , 1 ]
all (nums)
# False
chars = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' ]
all (chars)
# True

Likewise, any () determines if one or more values in an iterable evaluate to

True

nums = [1 , 1 , 0 , 1 ]
any (nums)
# True
vals = [None , None , None , False ] any (vals)
# False
While this example uses a list, it is important to note these built-ins work
with any iterable, including generators.

vals = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
any (val > 12 for val in vals) # False
any ((val * 2 ) > 6 for val in vals) # True

Section 20.7: Reversing list elements

You can use the reversed function which returns an iterator to the reversed
list:
In [3 ]: rev = reversed (numbers)
In [4 ]: rev
Out[4 ]: [9 , 8 , 7 , 6 , 5 , 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 ]
Note that the list "numbers" remains unchanged by this operation, and
remains in the same order it was originally.
To reverse in place, you can also use the reverse method.
You can also reverse a list (actually obtaining a copy, the original list is
unaffected) by using the slicing syntax, setting the third argument (the step)
as -1:
In [1 ]: numbers = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]
In [2 ]: numbers[::1 ]
Out[2 ]: [9 , 8 , 7 , 6 , 5 , 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 ]

Section 20.8: Concatenate and Merge lists

1. The simplest way to concatenate list1 and list2:

merged = list1 + list2
2. zip returns a list of tuples , where the i-th tuple contains the i-th element
from each of the argument sequences or iterables:
alist = ['a1' , 'a2' , 'a3' ] blist = ['b1' , 'b2' , 'b3' ]
for a, b in zip (alist, blist): print (a, b)

# Output: # a1 b1
# a2 b2
# a3 b3
If the lists have different lengths then the result will include only as many
elements as the shortest one:

alist = ['a1' , 'a2' , 'a3' ] blist = ['b1' , 'b2' , 'b3' , 'b4' ] for a, b in zip (alist, blist):

print (a, b)

# Output: # a1 b1
# a2 b2
# a3 b3

alist = []
len (list (zip (alist, blist)))
# Output: # 0
For padding lists of unequal length to the longest one with None s use
itertools .zip_longest (itertools .izip_longest in Python 2)

alist = ['a1' , 'a2' , 'a3' ] blist = ['b1' ]

clist = ['c1' , 'c2' , 'c3' , 'c4' ]

for a, b, c in itertools .zip_longest(alist, blist, clist): print (a, b, c)

# Output:
# a1 b1 c1
# a2 None c2 # a3 None c3 # None None c4

3. Insert to a specific index values:

alist = [123 , 'xyz' , 'zara' , 'abc' ] alist.insert(3 , [2009 ])

print ("Final List :" , alist)

Output: Final List : [123 , 'xyz' , 'zara' , 2009 , 'abc' ]

Section 20.9: Length of a list

Use len () to get the one-dimensional length of a list.
len (['one' , 'two' ]) # returns 2
len (['one' , [2 , 3 ], 'four' ]) # returns 3, not 4
len () also works on strings, dictionaries, and other data structures similar to
lists.
Note that len () is a built-in function, not a method of a list object.
Also note that the cost of len () is O(1 ), meaning it will take the same
amount of time to get the length of a list regardless of its length.

Section 20.10: Remove duplicate values in list

Removing duplicate values in a list can be done by converting the list to a set
(that is an unordered collection of distinct objects). If a list data structure is
needed, then the set can be converted back to a list using the function list ():

names = ["aixk" , "duke" , "edik" , "tofp" , "duke" ] list (set (names))

# Out: ['duke', 'tofp', 'aixk', 'edik']

Note that by converting a list to a set the original ordering is lost.

To preserve the order of the list one can use an OrderedDict

import collections
>>> collections .OrderedDict.fromkeys(names).keys() # Out: ['aixk', 'duke',
'edik', 'tofp']

Section 20.11: Comparison of lists

It's possible to compare lists and other sequences lexicographically using

comparison operators. Both operands must be of the same type.

[ 1 , 10 , 100 ] < [2 , 10 , 100 ]

# True, because 1 < 2
[1 , 10 , 100 ] < [1 , 10 , 100 ]
# False, because the lists are equal [1 , 10 , 100 ] <= [1 , 10 , 100 ]
# True, because the lists are equal [1 , 10 , 100 ] < [1 , 10 , 101 ]
# True, because 100 < 101
[1 , 10 , 100 ] < [0 , 10 , 100 ]
# False, because 0 < 1

If one of the lists is contained at the start of the other, the shortest list wins.
[1 , 10 ] < [1 , 10 , 100 ] # True

Section 20.12: Accessing values in nested list

Starting with a three-dimensional list:

alist = [[[1 , 2 ], [3 , 4 ]], [[5 , 6 , 7 ], [8 , 9 , 10 ], [12 , 13 , 14 ]]]
Accessing items in the list:

print (alist[0 ][0 ][1 ])

#2
#Accesses second element in the first list in the first list

print (alist[1 ][1 ][2 ])

#10
#Accesses the third element in the second list in the second list

Performing support operations:

alist[ 0 ][0 ].append(11 )

print (alist[0 ][0 ][2 ])
#11
#Appends 11 to the end of the first list in the first list

Using nested for loops to print the list:

for row in alist: #One way to loop through nested lists for col in row:
print (col)

#[1, 2, 11]
#[3, 4]
#[5, 6, 7]
#[8, 9, 10]
#[12, 13, 14]

Note that this operation can be used in a list comprehension or even as a

generator to produce efficiencies, e.g.:
[col for row in alist for col in row]
#[[1, 2, 11], [3, 4], [5, 6, 7], [8, 9, 10], [12, 13, 14]]
Not all items in the outer lists have to be lists themselves:
alist[1 ].insert(2 , 15 )
#Inserts 15 into the third position in the second list
Another way to use nested for loops. The other way is better but I've needed
to use this on occasion:
for row in range (len (alist)): #A less Pythonic way to loop through lists for
col in range (len (alist[row])):
print (alist[row][col])

#[1, 2, 11] #[3, 4]

#[5, 6, 7]
#[8, 9, 10] #15
#[12, 13, 14]

Using slices in nested list:

print (alist[1 ][1 :])

#[[8, 9, 10], 15, [12, 13, 14]] #Slices still work

The final list:

print (alist)
#[[[1, 2, 11], [3, 4]], [[5, 6, 7], [8, 9, 10], 15, [12, 13, 14]]]

Section 20.13: Initializing a List to a Fixed Number of Elements

For immutable elements (e.g. None , string literals etc.):
my_list = [None ] * 10
my_list = ['test' ] * 10
For mutable elements, the same construct will result in all elements of the
list referring to the same object, for example, for a set:

>>> my_list= [{1 }] * 10 >>> print (my_list)

[{1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }, {1 }]
>>> my_list[0 ].add(2 )
>>> print (my_list)
[{1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 }, {1 , 2 },

Instead, to initialize the list with a fixed number of different mutable

objects, use: my_list= [{1 } for _ in range (10 )]
Chapter 21: List comprehensions
List comprehensions in Python are concise, syntactic constructs. They can be
utilized to generate lists from other lists by applying functions to each
element in the list. The following section explains and demonstrates the use
of these expressions.

Section 21.1: List Comprehensions

A list comprehension creates a new list by applying an expression to each

element of an iterable. The most basic form is:
[ < expression> for < element> in < iterable> ]
There's also an optional 'if' condition:
[ < expression> for < element> in < iterable> if < condition> ]

Each <element> in the <iterable> is plugged in to the <expression> if the

(optional) <condition> evaluates to true . All results are returned at once in
the new list. Generator expressions are evaluated lazily, but list
comprehensions evaluate the entire iterator immediately - consuming
memory proportional to the iterator's length.

To create a list of squared integers:

squares = [x * x for x in (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 )]
# squares: [1, 4, 9, 16]
The for expression sets x to each value in turn from (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ). The result of
the expression x * x is appended to an internal list . The internal list is
assigned to the variable squares when completed.
Besides a speed increase (as explained here ), a list comprehension is roughly
equivalent to the following for-loop:
squares = []
for x in (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ):
squares.append(x * x)
# squares: [1, 4, 9, 16]
The expression applied to each element can be as complex as needed:

# Get a list of uppercase characters from a string

[s.upper() for s in "Hello World" ]
# ['H', 'E', 'L', 'L', 'O', ' ', 'W', 'O', 'R', 'L', 'D']

# Strip off any commas from the end of strings in a list

[w.strip(',' ) for w in ['these,' , 'words,,' , 'mostly' , 'have,commas,' ]]
# ['these', 'words', 'mostly', 'have,commas']

# Organize letters in words more reasonably - in an alphabetical order

sentence = "Beautiful is better than ugly"
["" .join(sorted (word, key = lambda x: x.lower())) for word in
sentence.split()] # ['aBefiltuu', 'is', 'beertt', 'ahnt', 'gluy']

else
else can be used in List comprehension constructs, but be careful regarding
the syntax. The if/else clauses should be used before for loop, not after:
# create a list of characters in apple, replacing non vowels with '*' # Ex -
'apple' --> ['a', '*', '*', '*' ,'e']
[x for x in 'apple' if x in 'aeiou' else '*' ] #SyntaxError: invalid syntax

# When using if/else together use them before the loop [x if x in 'aeiou' else '*'
for x in 'apple' ] #['a', '*', '*', '*', 'e']

Note this uses a different language construct, a conditional expression , which

itself is not part of the comprehension syntax . Whereas the if after the for
…in is a part of list comprehensions and used to filter elements from the
source iterable.

Double Iteration
Order of double iteration [... for x in ... for y in ...] is either natural or
counter-intuitive. The rule of thumb is to follow an equivalent for loop:
def foo(i):
return i, i + 0.5
for i in range (3 ): for x in foo(i): yield str (x) This becomes:
[str (x)
for i in range (3 ) for x in foo(i) ]
This can be compressed into one line as [str (x) for i in range (3 ) for x in
foo(i)]
In-place Mutation and Other Side Effects
Before using list comprehension, understand the difference between functions
called for their side effects (mutating , or in-place functions) which usually
return None , and functions that return an interesting value.

Many functions (especially pure functions) simply take an object and return
some object. An in-place function modifies the existing object, which is
called a side effect . Other examples include input and output operations such
as printing.

list . sort() sorts a list in-place (meaning that it modifies the original list) and
returns the value None . Therefore, it won't work as expected in a list
comprehension:
[x.sort() for x in [[2 , 1 ], [4 , 3 ], [0 , 1 ]]] # [None, None, None]
Instead, sorted () returns a sorted list rather than sorting in-place:
[sorted (x) for x in [[2 , 1 ], [4 , 3 ], [0 , 1 ]]] # [[1, 2], [3, 4], [0, 1]]
Using comprehensions for side-effects is possible, such as I/O or in-place
functions. Yet a for loop is usually more readable. While this works in
Python 3:
[print (x) for x in (1 , 2 , 3 )]
Instead use:
for x in (1 , 2 , 3 ): print (x)

In some situations, side effect functions are suitable for list comprehension.
random . randrange() has the side effect of changing the state of the random
number generator, but it also returns an interesting value. Additionally, next()
can be called on an iterator.

The following random value generator is not pure, yet makes sense as the
random generator is reset every time the expression is evaluated:

from random import randrange

[randrange(1 , 7 ) for _ in range (10 )] # [2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3, 5]

Whitespace in list comprehensions

More complicated list comprehensions can reach an undesired length, or
become less readable. Although less common in examples, it is possible to
break a list comprehension into multiple lines like so:

[ x for x
in 'foo'
if x not in 'bar'

Section 21.2: Conditional List Comprehensions

Given a list comprehension you can append one or more if conditions to filter
values.
[< expression> for < element> in < iterable> if < condition> ]
For each <element> in <iterable> ; if <condition> evaluates to True , add
<expression> (usually a function of <element> ) to the returned list.
For example, this can be used to extract only even numbers from a sequence
of integers:
[x for x in range (10 ) if x % 2 == 0 ]
# Out: [0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
Live demo
The above code is equivalent to:
even_numbers = []
for x in range (10 ):
if x % 2 == 0 :
even_numbers.append(x) print (even_numbers) # Out: [0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
Also, a conditional list comprehension of the form [e for x in y if c] (where e
and c are expressions in terms of x) is equivalent to list (filter (lambda x: c,
map (lambda x: e, y))).
Despite providing the same result, pay attention to the fact that the former
example is almost 2x faster than the latter one. For those who are curious,
this is a nice explanation of the reason why.

Note that this is quite different from the ... if ... else ... conditional expression
(sometimes known as a ternary expression) that you can use for the
<expression> part of the list comprehension. Consider the following
example:

[x if x % 2 == 0 else None for x in range (10 )] # Out: [0, None, 2, None, 4,

None, 6, None, 8, None]
Live demo
Here the conditional expression isn't a filter, but rather an operator
determining the value to be used for the list items:
<value-if-condition-is-true> if <condition> else <value-if-condition-is-
false>
This becomes more obvious if you combine it with other operators:
[2 * (x if x % 2 == 0 else 1 ) + 1 for x in range (10 )] # Out: [1, -1, 5, -1, 9, -1,
13, -1, 17, -1]
Live demo
If you are using Python 2.7, xrange may be better than range for several
reasons as described in the xrange documentation .
[2 * (x if x % 2 == 0 else 1 ) + 1 for x in xrange (10 )] # Out: [1, -1, 5, -1, 9, -1,
13, -1, 17, -1]
The above code is equivalent to:
numbers = []
for x in range (10 ):
if x % 2 == 0 :

temp = x
else :
temp = 1
numbers.append(2 * temp + 1 )
print (numbers)
# Out: [1, -1, 5, -1, 9, -1, 13, -1, 17, -1]

One can combine ternary expressions and if conditions. The ternary operator
works on the filtered result:
[x if x > 2 else '*' for x in range (10 ) if x % 2 == 0 ] # Out: ['*', '*', 4, 6, 8]
The same couldn't have been achieved just by ternary operator only:
[x if (x > 2 and x % 2 == 0 ) else '*' for x in range (10 )] # Out:['*', '*', '*', '*', 4,
'*', 6, '*', 8, '*'] See also: Filters, which often provide a sufficient alternative
to conditional list comprehensions.

Section 21.3: Avoid repetitive and expensive operations using

conditional clause
Consider the below list comprehension:
>>> def f(x):
... import time
... time .sleep(.1 ) # Simulate expensive function ... return x**2

>>> [f(x) for x in range (1000 ) if f(x) > 10 ] [16 , 25 , 36 , ...]

This results in two calls to f(x) for 1,000 values of x: one call for generating
the value and the other for checking the if condition. If f(x) is a particularly
expensive operation, this can have significant performance implications.
Worse, if calling f() has side effects, it can have surprising results.

Instead, you should evaluate the expensive operation only once for each
value of x by generating an intermediate iterable (generator expression) as
follows:
>>> [v for v in (f(x) for x in range (1000 )) if v > 10 ] [16 , 25 , 36 , ...]
Or, using the builtin map equivalent:
>>> [v for v in map (f, range (1000 )) if v > 10 ] [16 , 25 , 36 , ...]

Another way that could result in a more readable code is to put the partial
result ( v in the previous example) in an iterable (such as a list or a tuple) and
then iterate over it. Since v will be the only element in the iterable, the result
is that we now have a reference to the output of our slow function computed
only once:

>>> [v for x in range (1000 ) for v in [f(x)] if v > 10 ] [16 , 25 , 36 , ...]

However, in practice, the logic of code can be more complicated and it's
important to keep it readable. In general, a separate generator function is
recommended over a complex one-liner:

>>> def process_prime_numbers(iterable):

... for x in iterable:
... if is_prime(x):
... yield f(x)
...
>>> [x for x in process_prime_numbers(range (1000 )) if x > 10 ] [11 , 13 , 17
19 , ...]

Another way to prevent computing f(x) multiple times is to use the @

functools. lru_cache()(Python 3.2+) decorator on f(x). This way since the
output of f for the input x has already been computed once, the second
function invocation of the original list comprehension will be as fast as a
dictionary lookup. This approach uses memoization to improve efficiency,
which is comparable to using generator expressions.

Say you have to flatten a list

l = [[1 , 2 , 3 ], [4 , 5 , 6 ], [7 ], [8 , 9 ]]
Some of the methods could be:
reduce (lambda x, y: x+y, l)
sum (l, [])
list (itertools .chain(*l))
However list comprehension would provide the best time complexity.
[item for sublist in l for item in sublist]

The shortcuts based on + (including the implied use in sum) are, of necessity,
O(L^2) when there are L sublists -- as the intermediate result list keeps
getting longer, at each step a new intermediate result list object gets allocated,
and all the items in the previous intermediate result must be copied over (as
well as a few new ones added at the end). So (for simplicity and without
actual loss of generality) say you have L sublists of I items each: the first I
items are copied back and forth L-1 times, the second I items L-2 times, and
so on; total number of copies is I times the sum of x for x from 1 to L
excluded, i.e., I * (L**2)/2.

The list comprehension just generates one list, once, and copies each item
over (from its original place of residence to the result list) also exactly once.

Section 21.4: Dictionary Comprehensions

A dictionary comprehension is similar to a list comprehension except that it
produces a dictionary object instead of a list.
A basic example:
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.7
{x: x * x for x in (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 )}
# Out: {1: 1, 2: 4, 3: 9, 4: 16}
which is just another way of writing:
dict ((x, x * x) for x in (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 )) # Out: {1: 1, 2: 4, 3: 9, 4: 16}
As with a list comprehension, we can use a conditional statement inside the
dict comprehension to produce only the dict elements meeting some criterion.

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.7

{name: len (name) for name in ('Stack' , 'Overflow' , 'Exchange' ) if len (name)
> 6 } # Out: {'Exchange': 8, 'Overflow': 8}

Or, rewritten using a generator expression.

dict ((name, len (name)) for name in ('Stack' , 'Overflow' , 'Exchange' ) if len
(name) > 6 ) # Out: {'Exchange': 8, 'Overflow': 8}
Starting with a dictionary and using dictionary comprehension as a key-
value pair filter
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.7

initial_dict = {'x' : 1 , 'y' : 2 }

{key: value for key, value in initial_dict.items() if key == 'x' } # Out: {'x': 1}

Switching key and value of dictionary (invert dictionary)

If you have a dict containing simple hashable values (duplicate values may
have unexpected results):
my_dict = {1 : 'a' , 2 : 'b' , 3 : 'c' }
and you wanted to swap the keys and values you can take several approaches
depending on your coding style:

swapped = {v: k for k, v in my_dict.items()} swapped = dict ((v, k) for k, v in

my_dict.iteritems()) swapped = dict (zip (my_dict.values(), my_dict))
swapped = dict (zip (my_dict.values(), my_dict.keys())) swapped = dict (map
(reversed , my_dict.items()))

print (swapped)
# Out: {a: 1, b: 2, c: 3} Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
If your dictionary is large, consider importing itertools and utilize izip or
imap.
Merging Dictionaries
Combine dictionaries and optionally override old values with a nested
dictionary comprehension.
dict1 = {'w' : 1 , 'x' : 1 }
dict2 = {'x' : 2 , 'y' : 2 , 'z' : 2 }
{k: v for d in [dict1, dict2] for k, v in d.items()} # Out: {'w': 1, 'x': 2, 'y': 2,
'z': 2}
However, dictionary unpacking (PEP 448 ) may be a preferred.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.5

{**dict1, **dict2}
# Out: {'w': 1, 'x': 2, 'y': 2, 'z': 2}

Note : dictionary comprehensions were added in Python 3.0 and backported

to 2.7+, unlike list comprehensions, which were added in 2.0. Versions < 2.7
can use generator expressions and the dict () builtin to simulate the behavior
of dictionary comprehensions.

Section 21.5: List Comprehensions with Nested Loops

List Comprehensions can use nested for loops. You can code any number of
nested for loops within a list comprehension, and each for loop may have an
optional associated if test. When doing so, the order of the for constructs is
the same order as when writing a series of nested for statements. The general
structure of list comprehensions looks like this:

[ expression for target1 in iterable1 [if condition1] for target2 in iterable2 [if
condition2]... for targetN in iterableN [if conditionN] ]

For example, the following code flattening a list of lists using multiple for
statements:

data = [[1 , 2 ], [3 , 4 ], [5 , 6 ]] output = []

for each_list in data:

for element in each_list: output.append(element) print (output)

# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

can be equivalently written as a list comprehension with multiple for

constructs:

data = [[1 , 2 ], [3 , 4 ], [5 , 6 ]]
output = [element for each_list in data for element in each_list] print
(output)
# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Live Demo
In both the expanded form and the list comprehension, the outer loop (first
for statement) comes first.
In addition to being more compact, the nested comprehension is also
significantly faster.

In [ 1 ]: data = [[1 , 2 ], [3 , 4 ], [5 , 6 ]]
In [2 ]: def f():
...: output= []
...: for each_list in data:
...: for element in each_list:
...: output.append(element)
...: return output
In [3 ]: timeit f()
1000000 loops, best of 3 : 1.37 µs per loop
In [4 ]: timeit [inner for outer in data for inner in outer]
1000000 loops, best of 3 : 632 ns per loop

The overhead for the function call above is about 140ns .

Inline ifs are nested similarly, and may occur in any position after the first for
:

data = [[1 ], [2 , 3 ], [4 , 5 ]]
output = [element for each_list in data if len (each_list) == 2
for element in each_list
if element != 5 ]
print (output)
# Out: [2, 3, 4]

Live Demo
For the sake of readability, however, you should consider using traditional
for-loops . This is especially true when nesting is more than 2 levels deep,
and/or the logic of the comprehension is too complex. multiple nested loop
list comprehension could be error prone or it gives unexpected result.
Section 21.6: Generator Expressions

Generator expressions are very similar to list comprehensions. The main

difference is that it does not create a full set of results at once; it creates a
generator object which can then be iterated over.
For instance, see the difference in the following code:

# list comprehension
[x**2 for x in range (10 )]
# Output: [0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.4

# generator comprehension
(x**2 for x in xrange (10 ))
# Output: <generator object <genexpr> at 0x11b4b7c80>

These are two very different objects:

the list comprehension returns a list object whereas the generator
comprehension returns a generator.
generator objects cannot be indexed and makes use of the next function to get
items in order.

Note : We use xrange since it too creates a generator object. If we would use
range, a list would be created. Also, xrange exists only in later version of
python 2. In python 3, range just returns a generator. For more information,
see the Differences between range and xrange functions example.

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.4

g = (x**2 for x in xrange (10 ))
print (g[0 ])

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
TypeError : 'generator' object has no attribute '__getitem__'

g.next() # 0
g.next() # 1
g.next() # 4
...
g.next() # 81

g.next() # Throws StopIteration Exception

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
StopIteration

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

NOTE: The function g.next() should be substituted by next(g) and xrange
with range since Iterator.next() and xrange () do not exist in Python 3.
Although both of these can be iterated in a similar way:
for i in [x**2 for x in range (10 )]: print (i)

"""
Out:
0
1
4
...
81
"""

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.4

for i in (x**2 for x in xrange (10 )): print (i)

"""
Out: 0
1
4
.
.
.
81
"""

Use cases
Generator expressions are lazily evaluated, which means that they generate
and return each value only when the generator is iterated. This is often useful
when iterating through large datasets, avoiding the need to create a duplicate
of the dataset in memory:

for square in (x**2 for x in range (1000000 )): #do something

Another common use case is to avoid iterating over an entire iterable if doing
so is not necessary. In this example, an item is retrieved from a remote API
with each iteration of get_objects(). Thousands of objects may exist, must be
retrieved one-by-one, and we only need to know if an object matching a
pattern exists. By using a generator expression, when we encounter an object
matching the pattern.

def get_objects():
"""Gets objects from an API one by one""" while True :

yield get_next_item()

def object_matches_pattern(obj):
# perform potentially complex calculation return matches_pattern

def right_item_exists():
items = (object_matched_pattern(each) for each in get_objects()) for item in
items:

if item.is_the_right_one:
return True return False

Section 21.7: Set Comprehensions

Set comprehension is similar to list and dictionary comprehension, but it
produces a set , which is an unordered collection of unique elements.
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.7

# A set containing every value in range(5):

{x for x in range (5 )}
# Out: {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}
# A set of even numbers between 1 and 10:
{x for x in range (1 , 11 ) if x % 2 == 0 }
# Out: {2, 4, 6, 8, 10}

# Unique alphabetic characters in a string of text:

text = "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one
people..." {ch.lower() for ch in text if ch.isalpha()}
# Out: set(['a', 'c', 'b', 'e', 'f', 'i', 'h', 'm', 'l', 'o',
# 'n', 'p', 's', 'r', 'u', 't', 'w', 'v', 'y'])

Live Demo
Keep in mind that sets are unordered. This means that the order of the results
in the set may differ from the one presented in the above examples.
Note : Set comprehension is available since python 2.7+, unlike list
comprehensions, which were added in 2.0. In Python 2.2 to Python 2.6, the
set () function can be used with a generator expression to produce the same
result:
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.2 set (x for x in range (5 )) # Out: {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}

Section 21.8: Refactoring filter and map to list comprehensions

The filter or map functions should often be replaced by list comprehensions .
Guido Van Rossum describes this well in an open letter in 2005 :

filter (P, S) is almost always written clearer as [x for x in S if P(x)], and this
has the huge advantage that the most common usages involve predicates that
are comparisons, e.g. x== 42 , and defining a lambda for that just requires
much more effort for the reader (plus the lambda is slower than the list
comprehension). Even more so for map (F, S) which becomes [F(x) for x in
S]. Of course, in many cases you'd be able to use generator expressions
instead.

The following lines of code are considered "not pythonic " and will raise
errors in many python linters.

filter (lambda x: x % 2 == 0 , range (10 )) # even numbers < 10 map (lambda

x: 2 *x, range (10 )) # multiply each number by two reduce (lambda x, y: x+y,
range (10 )) # sum of all elements in list
Taking what we have learned from the previous quote, we can break down
these filter and map expressions into their equivalent list comprehensions ;
also removing the lambda functions from each - making the code more
readable in the process.

# Filter:
# P(x) = x % 2 == 0
# S = range(10)
[x for x in range (10 ) if x % 2 == 0 ]

# Map
# F(x) = 2*x
# S = range(10)
[2 *x for x in range (10 )]

Readability becomes even more apparent when dealing with chaining

functions. Where due to readability, the results of one map or filter function
should be passed as a result to the next; with simple cases, these can be
replaced with a single list comprehension. Further, we can easily tell from the
list comprehension what the outcome of our process is, where there is more
cognitive load when reasoning about the chained Map & Filter process.

# Map & Filter

filtered = filter (lambda x: x % 2 == 0 , range (10 )) results = map (lambda x:
*x, filtered)

# List comprehension
results = [2 *x for x in range (10 ) if x % 2 == 0 ]
Refactoring - Quick Reference
Map
map (F, S) == [F(x) for x in S]
Filter
filter (P, S) == [x for x in S if P(x)] where F and P are functions which
respectively transform input values and return a bool

Section 21.9: Comprehensions involving tuples

The for clause of a list comprehension can specify more than one variable:
[x + y for x, y in [(1 , 2 ), (3 , 4 ), (5 , 6 )]]
# Out: [3, 7, 11]
[x + y for x, y in zip ([1 , 3 , 5 ], [2 , 4 , 6 ])]
# Out: [3, 7, 11]
This is just like regular for loops:

for x, y in [(1 , 2 ), (3 , 4 ), (5 , 6 )]:

print (x+y)
#3
#7
# 11

Note however, if the expression that begins the comprehension is a tuple then
it must be parenthesized:
[x, y for x, y in [(1 , 2 ), (3 , 4 ), (5 , 6 )]]
# SyntaxError: invalid syntax
[(x, y) for x, y in [(1 , 2 ), (3 , 4 ), (5 , 6 )]] # Out: [(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]

Section 21.10: Counting Occurrences Using Comprehension

When we want to count the number of items in an iterable, that meet some
condition, we can use comprehension to produce an idiomatic syntax:

# Count the numbers in `range(1000)` that are even and contain the digit `9`:
print (sum (
1 for x in range (1000 )
if x % 2 == 0 and
'9' in str (x)
))
# Out: 95

The basic concept can be summarized as:

1. Iterate over the elements in range (1000 ).

2. Concatenate all the needed if conditions.
3. Use 1 as expression to return a 1 for each item that meets the conditions.
4. Sum up all the 1s to determine number of items that meet the conditions.
Note : Here we are not collecting the 1s in a list (note the absence of square
brackets), but we are passing the ones directly to the sum function that is
summing them up. This is called a generator expression , which is similar to
a Comprehension.

Section 21.11: Changing Types in a List

Quantitative data is often read in as strings that must be converted to numeric
types before processing. The types of all list items can be converted with
either a List Comprehension or the map () function.

# Convert a list of strings to integers. items = ["1" , "2" , "3" , "4" ]

[int (item) for item in items]
# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4]

# Convert a list of strings to float. items = ["1" , "2" , "3" , "4" ]

map (float , items)
# Out:[1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0]

Section 21.12: Nested List Comprehensions

Nested list comprehensions, unlike list comprehensions with nested loops, are
List comprehensions within a list comprehension. The initial expression can
be any arbitrary expression, including another list comprehension.

#List Comprehension with nested loop

[x + y for x in [1 , 2 , 3 ] for y in [3 , 4 , 5 ]]
#Out: [4, 5, 6, 5, 6, 7, 6, 7, 8]

#Nested List Comprehension

[[x + y for x in [1 , 2 , 3 ]] for y in [3 , 4 , 5 ]]
#Out: [[4, 5, 6], [5, 6, 7], [6, 7, 8]]

The Nested example is equivalent to

l = []
for y in [3 , 4 , 5 ]:
temp = []
for x in [1 , 2 , 3 ]: temp.append(x + y)
l.append(temp)

One example where a nested comprehension can be used it to transpose a

matrix.

matrix = [[1 , 2 , 3 ], [4 , 5 , 6 ], [7 , 8 , 9 ]]

[[row[i] for row in matrix] for i in range (len (matrix))] # [[1, 4, 7], [2, 5, 8],
[3, 6, 9]]
Like nested for loops, there is no limit to how deep comprehensions can be
nested.
[[[i + j + k for k in 'cd' ] for j in 'ab' ] for i in '12' ]
# Out: [[['1ac', '1ad'], ['1bc', '1bd']], [['2ac', '2ad'], ['2bc', '2bd']]]

Section 21.13: Iterate two or more list simultaneously within

list comprehension
For iterating more than two lists simultaneously within list comprehension ,
one may use zip () as:

>>> list_1 = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
>>> list_2 = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' ]
>>> list_3 = ['6' , '7' , '8' , '9' ]

# Two lists
>>> [(i, j) for i, j in zip (list_1, list_2)]
[(1 , 'a' ), (2 , 'b' ), (3 , 'c' ), (4 , 'd' )]

# Three lists
>>> [(i, j, k) for i, j, k in zip (list_1, list_2, list_3)]
[(1 , 'a' , '6' ), (2 , 'b' , '7' ), (3 , 'c' , '8' ), (4 , 'd' , '9' )]

# so on ...

Chapter 22: List slicing (selecting parts of lists)

Section 22.1: Using the third "step" argument

lst = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' , 'f' , 'g' , 'h' ]

lst[::2 ]
# Output: ['a', 'c', 'e', 'g']
lst[::3 ]
# Output: ['a', 'd', 'g']

Section 22.2: Selecting a sublist from a list

lst = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' ]

lst[2 :4 ]
# Output: ['c', 'd']
lst[2 :]
# Output: ['c', 'd', 'e']
lst[:4 ]
# Output: ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Section 22.3: Reversing a list with slicing

a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
# steps through the list backwards (step=-1)
b = a[::1 ]
# built-in list method to reverse 'a'
a.reverse()
if a = b:
print (True )
print (b)

# Output:
# True
# [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

Section 22.4: Shifting a list using slicing

def shift_list(array , s):

"""Shifts the elements of a list to the left or right.
Args:
array - the list to shift
s - the amount to shift the list ('+': right-shift, '-': left-shift)

Returns:
shifted_array - the shifted list
"""
# calculate actual shift amount (e.g., 11 --> 1 if length of the array is 5) s %=
len (array )

# reverse the shift direction to be more intuitive s *= 1

# shift array with list slicing shifted_array = array [s:] + array [:s]
return shifted_array
my_array = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]

# negative numbers
shift_list(my_array, 7 ) >>> [3 , 4 , 5 , 1 , 2 ]

# no shift on numbers equal to the size of the array shift_list(my_array, 5 )

>>> [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]

# works on positive numbers shift_list(my_array, 3 ) >>> [3 , 4 , 5 , 1 , 2 ]

Chapter 23: groupby()

Parameter iterable
key

Details
Any python iterable
Function(criteria) on which to group the iterable

In Python, the itertools .groupby() method allows developers to group values

of an iterable class based on a specified property into another iterable set of
values.

Section 23.1: Example 4

In this example we see what happens when we use different types of iterable.

things = [("animal" , "bear" ), ("animal" , "duck" ), ("plant" , "cactus" ),

("vehicle" , "harley" ), \ ("vehicle" , "speed boat" ), ("vehicle" , "school bus" )]
dic = {}
f = lambda x: x[0 ]
for key, group in groupby(sorted (things, key= f), f):
dic[key] = list (group)
dic

Results in

{ 'animal' : [('animal' , 'bear' ), ('animal' , 'duck' )], 'plant' : [('plant' , 'cactus' )],
'vehicle' : [('vehicle' , 'harley' ),

('vehicle' , 'speed boat' ),

('vehicle' , 'school bus' )]}
This example below is essentially the same as the one above it. The only
difference is that I have changed all the tuples to lists.

things = [["animal" , "bear" ], ["animal" , "duck" ], ["vehicle" , "harley" ],

["plant" , "cactus" ], \ ["vehicle" , "speed boat" ], ["vehicle" , "school bus" ]]
dic = {}
f = lambda x: x[0 ]
for key, group in groupby(sorted (things, key= f), f):
dic[key] = list (group)
dic

Results

{ 'animal' : [['animal' , 'bear' ], ['animal' , 'duck' ]], 'plant' : [['plant' , 'cactus' ]],
'vehicle' : [['vehicle' , 'harley' ],

['vehicle' , 'speed boat' ],

['vehicle' , 'school bus' ]]}

Section 23.2: Example 2

This example illustrates how the default key is chosen if we do not specify
any

c = groupby(['goat' , 'dog' , 'cow' , 1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 11 , 10 , ('persons' , 'man' , 'woman'

{}
for k, v in c:
dic[k] = list (v)

dic
Results in

{ 1 : [1 , 1 ],
2 : [2 ],
3 : [3 ],
('persons' , 'man' , 'woman' ): [('persons' , 'man' , 'woman' )], 'cow' : ['cow' ],
'dog' : ['dog' ],
10 : [10 ],
11 : [11 ],
'goat' : ['goat' ]}

Notice here that the tuple as a whole counts as one key in this list

Section 23.3: Example 3

Notice in this example that mulato and camel don't show up in our result.
Only the last element with the specified key shows up. The last result for c
actually wipes out two previous results. But watch the new version where I
have the data sorted first on same key.

list_things = ['goat' , 'dog' , 'donkey' , 'mulato' , 'cow' , 'cat' , ('persons' , 'man' ,

), \ 'wombat' , 'mongoose' , 'malloo' , 'camel' ]
c = groupby(list_things, key= lambda x: x[0 ])
dic = {}
for k, v in c:
dic[k] = list (v)
dic

Results in
{ 'c' : ['camel' ],
'd' : ['dog' , 'donkey' ],
'g' : ['goat' ],
'm' : ['mongoose' , 'malloo' ],
'persons' : [('persons' , 'man' , 'woman' )], 'w' : ['wombat' ]}

Sorted Version

list_things = ['goat' , 'dog' , 'donkey' , 'mulato' , 'cow' , 'cat' , ('persons' , 'man' ,

), \ 'wombat' , 'mongoose' , 'malloo' , 'camel' ]
sorted_list = sorted (list_things, key = lambda x: x[0 ])
print (sorted_list)
print ()
c = groupby(sorted_list, key= lambda x: x[0 ])
dic = {}
for k, v in c:
dic[k] = list (v)
dic

Results in
['cow' , 'cat' , 'camel' , 'dog' , 'donkey' , 'goat' , 'mulato' , 'mongoose' , 'malloo' ,
'man' , 'woman' ), 'wombat' ]

{ 'c' : ['cow' , 'cat' , 'camel' ],

'd' : ['dog' , 'donkey' ],
'g' : ['goat' ],
'm' : ['mulato' , 'mongoose' , 'malloo' ], 'persons' : [('persons' , 'man' , 'woman' )]
: ['wombat' ]}

Chapter 24: Linked lists

A linked list is a collection of nodes, each made up of a reference and a value.
Nodes are strung together into a sequence using their references. Linked lists
can be used to implement more complex data structures like lists, stacks,
queues, and associative arrays.

Section 24.1: Single linked list example

This example implements a linked list with many of the same methods as that
of the built-in list object.

class Node:
def __init__ (self , val):
self .data = val
self .next = None

def getData(self ):
return self .data
def getNext(self ):
return self .next
def setData(self , val):
self .data = val
def setNext(self , val):
self .next = val
class LinkedList:
def __init__ (self ):
self .head = None

def isEmpty(self ):
"""Check if the list is empty"""
return self .head is None

def add(self , item):

"""Add the item to the list"""
new_node = Node(item)
new_node.setNext(self .head)
self .head = new_node

def size(self ):
"""Return the length/size of the list"""
count = 0
current = self .head
while current is not None :

count += 1
current = current.getNext()
return count

def search(self , item):

"""Search for item in list. If found, return True. If not found, return False"""
current = self .head
found = False
while current is not None and not found:

if current.getData() is item:
found = True
else :
current = current.getNext()
return found

def remove(self , item):

"""Remove item from list. If item is not found in list, raise ValueError"""
current = self .head
previous = None
found = False
while current is not None and not found:

if current.getData() is item:
found = True
else :
previous = current
current = current.getNext()
if found:
if previous is None :
self .head = current.getNext()
else :
previous.setNext(current.getNext())
else :
raise ValueError
print 'Value not found.'

def insert(self , position, item):

"""
Insert item at position specified. If position specified is out of bounds, raise
IndexError
"""
if position > self .size() - 1 :

raise IndexError
print "Index out of bounds."
current = self .head
previous = None
pos = 0
if position is 0 :
self .add(item)
else :
new_node = Node(item)
while pos < position:
pos += 1
previous = current
current = current.getNext()
previous.setNext(new_node)
new_node.setNext(current)

def index(self , item):

"""
Return the index where item is found. If item is not found, return None. """
current = self .head
pos = 0
found = False
while current is not None and not found:

if current.getData() is item: found = True

else :
current = current.getNext() pos += 1
if found:
pass
else :
pos = None

return pos
def pop(self , position = None ):
"""
If no argument is provided, return and remove the item at the head. If
position is provided, return and remove the item at that position. If index is
out of bounds, raise IndexError
"""
if position > self .size():

print 'Index out of bounds'

raise IndexError

current = self .head

if position is None :
ret = current.getData()
self .head = current.getNext() else :
pos = 0
previous = None
while pos < position:
previous = current
current = current.getNext() pos += 1
ret = current.getData()
previous.setNext(current.getNext()) print ret
return ret

def append(self , item):

"""Append item to the end of the list""" current = self .head
previous = None
pos = 0
length = self .size()
while pos < length:

previous = current
current = current.getNext()
pos += 1

new_node = Node(item)
if previous is None :
new_node.setNext(current)
self .head = new_node
else :
previous.setNext(new_node)

def printList(self ):
"""Print the list"""
current = self .head
while current is not None :

print current.getData() current = current.getNext()

Usage functions much like that of the built-in list.

ll = LinkedList() ll.add('l' )
ll.add('H' )
ll.insert(1 , 'e' ) ll.append('l' ) ll.append('o' ) ll.printList() H e l l o

Chapter 25: Linked List Node

Section 25.1: Write a simple Linked List Node in python

A linked list is either:

the empty list, represented by None, or
a node that contains a cargo object and a reference to a linked list.
#! /usr/bin/env python

class Node:
def __init__ (self , cargo= None , next= None ):
self .car = cargo
self .cdr = next

def __str__ (self ):

return str (self .car)

def display(lst):
if lst:
w("%s " % lst) display(lst.cdr)
else :
w("nil \n " )

Chapter 26: Filter

Parameter function
iterable

Details
callable that determines the condition or None then use the identity function
for filtering (positionalonly )
iterable that will be filtered (positional-only )

Section 26.1: Basic use of filter

To filter discards elements of a sequence based on some criteria:
names = ['Fred' , 'Wilma' , 'Barney' ]
def long_name(name):
return len (name) > 5

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0

filter (long_name, names)
# Out: ['Barney']

[name for name in names if len (name) > 5 ] # equivalent list comprehension #
Out: ['Barney']

from itertools import ifilter

ifilter(long_name, names) # as generator (similar to python 3.x filter builtin)
# Out: <itertools.ifilter at 0x4197e10>
list (ifilter(long_name, names)) # equivalent to filter with lists
# Out: ['Barney']

(name for name in names if len (name) > 5 ) # equivalent generator

expression # Out: <generator object <genexpr> at 0x0000000003FD5D38>
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.6
# Besides the options for older python 2.x versions there is a future_builtin
function: from future_builtins import filter
filter (long_name, names) # identical to itertools.ifilter
# Out: <itertools.ifilter at 0x3eb0ba8>

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

filter (long_name, names) # returns a generator

# Out: <filter at 0x1fc6e443470>

list (filter (long_name, names)) # cast to list
# Out: ['Barney']

(name for name in names if len (name) > 5 ) # equivalent generator

expression # Out: <generator object <genexpr> at 0x000001C6F49BF4C0>

Section 26.2: Filter without function

If the function parameter is None , then the identity function will be used:
list (filter (None , [1 , 0 , 2 , [], '' , 'a' ])) # discards 0, [] and '' # Out: [1, 2, 'a']

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0.1

[i for i in [1 , 0 , 2 , [], '' , 'a' ] if i] # equivalent list comprehension Python 3.xVersion
≥ 3.0.0

(i for i in [1 , 0 , 2 , [], '' , 'a' ] if i) # equivalent generator expression

Section 26.3: Filter as short-circuit check

filter (python 3.x) and ifilter (python 2.x) return a generator so they can be
very handy when creating a shortcircuit test like or or and :
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.0.1
# not recommended in real use but keeps the example short:
from itertools import ifilter as filter
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.6.1
from future_builtins import filter
To find the first element that is smaller than 100:

car_shop = [('Toyota' , 1000 ), ('rectangular tire' , 80 ), ('Porsche' , 5000 )] def

find_something_smaller_than(name_value_tuple):
print ('Check {0}, {1}$' .format(*name_value_tuple)
return name_value_tuple[1 ] < 100
next(filter (find_something_smaller_than, car_shop))
# Print: Check Toyota, 1000$
# Check rectangular tire, 80$
# Out: ('rectangular tire', 80)

The next-function gives the next (in this case first) element of and is therefore
the reason why it's short-circuit.

Section 26.4: Complementary function: filterfalse, ifilterfalse

There is a complementary function for filter in the itertools -module:
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.0.1
# not recommended in real use but keeps the example valid for python 2.x
and python 3.x from itertools import ifilterfalse as filterfalse
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0.0
from itertools import filterfalse
which works exactly like the generator filter but keeps only the elements that
are False :

# Usage without function (None):

list (filterfalse(None , [1 , 0 , 2 , [], '' , 'a' ])) # discards 1, 2, 'a' # Out: [0, [], '']

# Usage with function

names = ['Fred' , 'Wilma' , 'Barney' ]
def long_name(name): return len (name) > 5
list (filterfalse(long_name, names)) # Out: ['Fred', 'Wilma']

# Short-circuit usage with next:

car_shop = [('Toyota' , 1000 ), ('rectangular tire' , 80 ), ('Porsche' , 5000 )] def
find_something_smaller_than(name_value_tuple):
print ('Check {0}, {1}$' .format(*name_value_tuple) return
name_value_tuple[1 ] < 100

next(filterfalse(find_something_smaller_than , car_shop)) # Print: Check

Toyota, 1000$
# Out: ('Toyota', 1000)

# Using an equivalent generator:

car_shop = [('Toyota' , 1000 ), ('rectangular tire' , 80 ), ('Porsche' , 5000 )]
generator = (car for car in car_shop if not car[1 ] < 100 )
next(generator)

Chapter 27: Heapq

Section 27.1: Largest and smallest items in a collection

To find the largest items in a collection, heapq module has a function called
nlargest, we pass it two arguments, the first one is the number of items that
we want to retrieve, the second one is the collection name:
import heapq
numbers = [1 , 4 , 2 , 100 , 20 , 50 , 32 , 200 , 150 , 8 ] print (heapq .nlargest(4
numbers)) # [200, 150, 100, 50]
Similarly, to find the smallest items in a collection, we use nsmallest
function:
print (heapq .nsmallest(4 , numbers)) # [1, 2, 4, 8]

Both nlargest and nsmallest functions take an optional argument (key

parameter) for complicated data structures. The following example shows the
use of age property to retrieve the oldest and the youngest people from people
dictionary:

people = [
{'firstname' : 'John' , 'lastname' : 'Doe' , 'age' : 30 }, {'firstname' : 'Jane' ,
'lastname' : 'Doe' , 'age' : 25 }, {'firstname' : 'Janie' , 'lastname' : 'Doe' , 'age' : 10
}, {'firstname' : 'Jane' , 'lastname' : 'Roe' , 'age' : 22 }, {'firstname' : 'Johnny' ,
'lastname' : 'Doe' , 'age' : 12 }, {'firstname' : 'John' , 'lastname' : 'Roe' , 'age' : 45

oldest = heapq .nlargest(2 , people, key= lambda s: s['age' ])

print (oldest)
# Output: [{'firstname': 'John', 'age': 45, 'lastname': 'Roe'}, {'firstname':
'John', 'age': 30, 'lastname': 'Doe'}]

youngest = heapq .nsmallest(2 , people, key= lambda s: s['age' ])

print (youngest)
# Output: [{'firstname': 'Janie', 'age': 10, 'lastname': 'Doe'}, {'firstname':
'Johnny', 'age': 12, 'lastname': 'Doe'}]

Section 27.2: Smallest item in a collection

The most interesting property of a heap is that its smallest element is always
the first element: heap[0 ]
import heapq
numbers = [10 , 4 , 2 , 100 , 20 , 50 , 32 , 200 , 150 , 8 ]

heapq .heapify(numbers)
print (numbers)
# Output: [2, 4, 10, 100, 8, 50, 32, 200, 150, 20]

heapq .heappop(numbers) # 2
print (numbers)
# Output: [4, 8, 10, 100, 20, 50, 32, 200, 150]

heapq .heappop(numbers) # 4
print (numbers)
# Output: [8, 20, 10, 100, 150, 50, 32, 200]

Chapter 28: Tuple

A tuple is an immutable list of values. Tuples are one of Python's simplest
and most common collection types, and can be created with the comma
operator (value = 1 , 2 , 3 ).

Section 28.1: Tuple

Syntactically, a tuple is a comma-separated list of values:
t = 'a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e'
Although not necessary, it is common to enclose tuples in parentheses:
t = ('a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' )
Create an empty tuple with parentheses:
t0 = ()
type (t0) # <type 'tuple'>
To create a tuple with a single element, you have to include a final comma:
t1 = 'a' ,
type (t1) # <type 'tuple'>
Note that a single value in parentheses is not a tuple:
t2 = ('a' )
type (t2) # <type 'str'>
To create a singleton tuple it is necessary to have a trailing comma.
t2 = ('a' , )
type (t2) # <type 'tuple'>
Note that for singleton tuples it's recommended (see PEP8 on trailing
commas ) to use parentheses. Also, no white space after the trailing comma
(see PEP8 on whitespaces )

t2 = ('a' , ) # PEP8-compliant
t2 = 'a' , # this notation is not recommended by PEP8
t2 = ('a' , ) # this notation is not recommended by PEP8

Another way to create a tuple is the built-in function tuple .

t = tuple ('lupins' )
print (t) # ('l', 'u', 'p', 'i', 'n', 's')
t = tuple (range (3 ))
print (t) # (0, 1, 2)

These examples are based on material from the book Think Python by Allen
B. Downey .

Section 28.2: Tuples are immutable

One of the main differences between list s and tuple s in Python is that tuples
are immutable, that is, one cannot add or modify items once the tuple is
initialized. For example:

>>> t = (1 , 4 , 9 )
>>> t[0 ] = 2
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : 'tuple' object does not support item assignment
Similarly, tuples don't have .append and .extend methods as list does. Using
+= is possible, but it changes the binding of the variable, and not the tuple
itself:

>>> t = (1 , 2 ) >>> q = t
>>> t += (3 , 4 ) >>> t
(1 , 2 , 3 , 4 )
>>> q
(1 , 2 )

Be careful when placing mutable objects, such as lists, inside tuples. This
may lead to very confusing outcomes when changing them. For example:

>>> t = (1 , 2 , 3 , [1 , 2 , 3 ]) (1 , 2 , 3 , [1 , 2 , 3 ])
>>> t[3 ] += [4 , 5 ]

Will both raise an error and change the contents of the list within the tuple:

TypeError : 'tuple' object does not support item assignment >>> t

(1 , 2 , 3 , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])

You can use the += operator to "append" to a tuple - this works by creating a
new tuple with the new element you "appended" and assign it to its current
variable; the old tuple is not changed, but replaced!
This avoids converting to and from a list, but this is slow and is a bad
practice, especially if you're going to append multiple times.

Section 28.3: Packing and Unpacking Tuples

Tuples in Python are values separated by commas. Enclosing parentheses for
inputting tuples are optional, so the two assignments
a = 1 , 2 , 3 # a is the tuple (1, 2, 3)
and
a = (1 , 2 , 3 ) # a is the tuple (1, 2, 3)
are equivalent. The assignment a = 1 , 2 , 3 is also called packing because it
packs values together in a tuple.
Note that a one-value tuple is also a tuple. To tell Python that a variable is a
tuple and not a single value you can use a trailing comma
a = 1 # a is the value 1 a = 1 , # a is the tuple (1,)
A comma is needed also if you use parentheses
a = (1 , ) # a is the tuple (1,)
a = (1 ) # a is the value 1 and not a tuple
To unpack values from a tuple and do multiple assignments use

# unpacking AKA multiple assignment x, y, z = (1 , 2 , 3 )

# x == 1
# y == 2
# z == 3

The symbol _ can be used as a disposable variable name if one only needs
some elements of a tuple, acting as a placeholder:

a = 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 _, x, y, _ = a # x == 2
# y == 3

Single element tuples:

x, = 1 , # x is the value 1 x = 1 , # x is the tuple (1,)
In Python 3 a target variable with a * prefix can be used as a catch-all
variable (see Unpacking Iterables ):

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

first, *more, last = (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 )

# first == 1
# more == [2, 3, 4]
# last == 5

Section 28.4: Built-in Tuple Functions

Tuples support the following build-in functions
Comparison
If elements are of the same type, python performs the comparison and returns
the result. If elements are different types, it checks whether they are numbers.

If numbers, perform comparison.

If either element is a number, then the other element is returned.
Otherwise, types are sorted alphabetically .

If we reached the end of one of the lists, the longer list is "larger." If both list
are same it returns 0.
tuple1 = ('a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' )
tuple2 = ('1' , '2' , '3' )
tuple3 = ('a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' ) cmp (tuple1, tuple2) Out: 1
cmp (tuple2, tuple1) Out: 1
cmp (tuple1, tuple3) Out: 0
Tuple Length
The function len returns the total length of the tuple
len (tuple1) Out: 5
Max of a tuple
The function max returns item from the tuple with the max value
max (tuple1) Out: 'e'
max (tuple2) Out: '3'
Min of a tuple
The function min returns the item from the tuple with the min value
min (tuple1) Out: 'a'
min (tuple2)
Out: '1'
Convert a list into tuple
The built-in function tuple converts a list into a tuple.

list = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] tuple (list )

Out: (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 )

Tuple concatenation
Use + to concatenate two tuples
tuple1 + tuple2
Out: ('a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' , '1' , '2' , '3' )
Section 28.5: Tuple Are Element-wise Hashable and Equatable

hash ( (1 , 2 ) ) # ok
hash ( ([], {"hello" }) # not ok, since lists and sets are not hashabe
Thus a tuple can be put inside a set or as a key in a dict only if each of its
elements can.
{ (1 , 2 ) } # ok { ([], {"hello" }) ) # not ok

Section 28.6: Indexing Tuples

x = (1 , 2 , 3 )
x[0 ] # 1
x[1 ] # 2
x[2 ] # 3
x[3 ] # IndexError: tuple index out of range

Indexing with negative numbers will start from the last element as -1:

x[1 ] # 3
x[2 ] # 2
x[3 ] # 1
x[4 ] # IndexError: tuple index out of range

Indexing a range of elements

print (x[:1 ]) # (1, 2) print (x[1 :]) # (3,) print (x[1 :3 ]) # (2, 3)

Section 28.7: Reversing Elements

Reverse elements within a tuple

colors = "red" , "green" , "blue"

rev = colors[::1 ]
# rev: ("blue", "green", "red")
colors = rev
# colors: ("blue", "green", "red")
Or using reversed (reversed gives an iterable which is converted to a tuple):

rev = tuple (reversed (colors)) # rev: ("blue", "green", "red") colors = rev
# colors: ("blue", "green", "red")

Chapter 29: Basic Input and Output

Section 29.1: Using the print function

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

In Python 3, print functionality is in the form of a function:
print ("This string will be displayed in the output" )
# This string will be displayed in the output
print ("You can print \n escape characters too." )
# You can print escape characters too.
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
In Python 2, print was originally a statement, as shown below.
print "This string will be displayed in the output"
# This string will be displayed in the output
print "You can print \n escape characters too."
# You can print escape characters too.
Note: using from __future__ import print_function in Python 2 will allow
users to use the print () function the same as Python 3 code. This is only
available in Python 2.6 and above.

Section 29.2: Input from a File

Input can also be read from files. Files can be opened using the built-in
function open . Using a with < command> as < name> syntax (called a
'Context Manager') makes using open and getting a handle for the file super
easy:
with open ('somefile.txt' , 'r' ) as fileobj: # write code here using fileobj
This ensures that when code execution leaves the block the file is
automatically closed.

Files can be opened in different modes. In the above example the file is
opened as read-only. To open an existing file for reading only use r. If you
want to read that file as bytes use rb. To append data to an existing file use a.
Use w to create a file or overwrite any existing files of the same name. You
can use r+ to open a file for both reading and writing. The first argument of
open () is the filename, the second is the mode. If mode is left blank, it will
default to r.

# let's create an example file:

with open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'w' ) as fileobj: fileobj.write('tomato \n pasta \n
garlic' )

with open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'r' ) as fileobj: # this method makes a list where
each line # of the file is an element in the list lines = fileobj.readlines()

print (lines)
# ['tomato\n', 'pasta\n', 'garlic']
with open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'r' ) as fileobj:

# here we read the whole content into one string: content = fileobj.read()
# get a list of lines, just like int the previous example: lines = content.split(' \n
)

print (lines)
# ['tomato', 'pasta', 'garlic']
If the size of the file is tiny, it is safe to read the whole file contents into
memory. If the file is very large it is often better to read line-by-line or by
chunks, and process the input in the same loop. To do that:

with open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'r' ) as fileobj: # this method reads line by line:
lines = []
for line in fileobj:

lines.append(line.strip())
When reading files, be aware of the operating system-specific line-break
characters. Although for line in fileobj automatically strips them off, it is
always safe to call strip() on the lines read, as it is shown above.

Opened files ( fileobj in the above examples) always point to a specific

location in the file. When they are first opened the file handle points to the
very beginning of the file, which is the position 0. The file handle can display
its current position with tell:

fileobj = open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'r' ) pos = fileobj.tell()

print ('We are at %u.' % pos) # We are at 0.

Upon reading all the content, the file handler's position will be pointed at the
end of the file:

content = fileobj.read()
end = fileobj.tell()
print ('This file was %u characters long.' % end) # This file was 22
characters long.
fileobj.close()

The file handler position can be set to whatever is needed:

fileobj = open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'r' ) fileobj.seek(7 )

pos = fileobj.tell()
print ('We are at character #%u.' % pos)

You can also read any length from the file content during a given call. To do
this pass an argument for read(). When read() is called with no argument it
will read until the end of the file. If you pass an argument it will read that
number of bytes or characters, depending on the mode (rb and r respectively):

# reads the next 4 characters

# starting at the current position
next4 = fileobj.read(4 )
# what we got?
print (next4) # 'cucu'
# where we are now?
pos = fileobj.tell()
print ('We are at %u.' % pos) # We are at 11, as we was at 7, and read 4
chars.

fileobj.close()
To demonstrate the difference between characters and bytes:
with open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'r' ) as fileobj: print (type (fileobj.read())) #
<class 'str'>
with open ('shoppinglist.txt' , 'rb' ) as fileobj: print (type (fileobj.read())) #
<class 'bytes'>

Section 29.3: Read from stdin

Python programs can read from unix pipelines . Here is a simple example
how to read from stdin :
import sys
for line in sys .stdin:
print (line)
Be aware that sys .stdin is a stream. It means that the for-loop will only
terminate when the stream has ended.
You can now pipe the output of another program into your python program as
follows:
$ cat myfile | python myprogram.py
In this example cat myfile can be any unix command that outputs to stdout.
Alternatively, using the fileinput module can come in handy:
import fileinput
for line in fileinput .input ():
process(line)

Section 29.4: Using input() and raw_input()

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3

raw_input will wait for the user to enter text and then return the result as a
string.
foo = raw_input ("Put a message here that asks the user for input" )
In the above example foo will store whatever input the user provides.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
input will wait for the user to enter text and then return the result as a string.
foo = input ("Put a message here that asks the user for input" )
In the above example foo will store whatever input the user provides.

Section 29.5: Function to prompt user for a number

def input_number(msg, err_msg= None ):
while True :
try :

return float (raw_input (msg)) except ValueError :

if err_msg is not None : print (err_msg)

def input_number(msg, err_msg= None ): while True :

try :

return float (input (msg)) except ValueError :

if err_msg is not None : print (err_msg)

And to use it:

user_number = input_number("input a number: " , "that's not a number!" )
Or, if you do not want an "error message": user_number =
input_number("input a number: " )

Section 29.6: Printing a string without a newline at the end

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
In Python 2.x, to continue a line with print , end the print statement with a
comma. It will automatically add a space.

print "Hello," ,
print "World!"
# Hello, World!

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

In Python 3.x, the print function has an optional end parameter that is what it
prints at the end of the given string. By default it's a newline character, so
equivalent to this:

print ("Hello, " , end= " \n " ) print ("World!" )

# Hello,
# World!

But you could pass in other strings

print ("Hello, " , end= "" ) print ("World!" )
# Hello, World!

print ("Hello, " , end= "<br>" ) print ("World!" )

# Hello, <br>World!

print ("Hello, " , end= "BREAK" ) print ("World!" )

# Hello, BREAKWorld!

If you want more control over the output, you can use sys .stdout.write:
import sys

sys .stdout.write("Hello, " ) sys .stdout.write("World!" ) # Hello, World!

Chapter 30: Files & Folders I/O

Parameter Details
filename the path to your file or, if the file is in the working directory, the
filename of your file access_mode a string value that determines how the file
is opened
buffering an integer value used for optional line buffering

When it comes to storing, reading, or communicating data, working with the

files of an operating system is both necessary and easy with Python. Unlike
other languages where file input and output requires complex reading and
writing objects, Python simplifies the process only needing commands to
open, read/write and close the file. This topic explains how Python can
interface with files on the operating system.

Section 30.1: File modes

There are different modes you can open a file with, specified by the mode
parameter. These include:
'r' - reading mode. The default. It allows you only to read the file, not to
modify it. When using this mode the file must exist.
'w' - writing mode. It will create a new file if it does not exist, otherwise will
erase the file and allow you to write to it.
'a' - append mode. It will write data to the end of the file. It does not erase the
file, and the file must exist for this mode.
'rb' - reading mode in binary. This is similar to r except that the reading is
forced in binary mode. This is also a default choice.
'r+' - reading mode plus writing mode at the same time. This allows you to
read and write into files at the same time without having to use r and w.
'rb+' - reading and writing mode in binary. The same as r+ except the data is
in binary
'wb' - writing mode in binary. The same as w except the data is in binary.
'w+' - writing and reading mode. The exact same as r+ but if the file does not
exist, a new one is made. Otherwise, the file is overwritten.
'wb+' - writing and reading mode in binary mode. The same as w+ but the
data is in binary.
'ab' - appending in binary mode. Similar to a except that the data is in binary.
'a+' - appending and reading mode. Similar to w+ as it will create a new file if
the file does not exist. Otherwise, the file pointer is at the end of the file if it
exists.
'ab+' - appending and reading mode in binary. The same as a+ except that the
data is in binary.

with open (filename, 'r' ) as f: f.read()

with open (filename, 'w' ) as f: f.write(filedata)
with open (filename, 'a' ) as f: f.write(' \\ n' + newdata)

r r+ w w+ a a+

Read ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘ ✔ Write ✘ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ Creates file ✘ ✘ ✔ ✔ ✔

✔ Erases file ✘ ✘ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘ Initial position Start Start Start Start End
End

Python 3 added a new mode for exclusive creation so that you will not
accidentally truncate or overwrite and existing file.

'x' - open for exclusive creation, will raise FileExistsError if the file already
exists
'xb' - open for exclusive creation writing mode in binary. The same as x
except the data is in binary. 'x+' - reading and writing mode. Similar to w+ as
it will create a new file if the file does not exist. Otherwise, will raise
FileExistsError.
'xb+' - writing and reading mode. The exact same as x+ but the data is binary

x x+ Read ✘ ✔ Write ✔ ✔ Creates file ✔ ✔ Erases file ✘ ✘ Initial

position Start Start

Allow one to write your file open code in a more pythonic manner:
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.3 try :
with open ("fname" , "r" ) as fout: # Work with your open file except
FileExistsError:
# Your error handling goes here
In Python 2 you would have done something like

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0

import os .path

if os .path.isfile(fname):
with open ("fname" , "w" ) as fout: # Work with your open file else :
# Your error handling goes here

Section 30.2: Reading a file line-by-line

The simplest way to iterate over a file line-by-line:
with open ('myfile.txt' , 'r' ) as fp:
for line in fp:
print (line)
readline () allows for more granular control over line-by-line iteration. The
example below is equivalent to the one above:
with open ('myfile.txt' , 'r' ) as fp: while True :
cur_line = fp.readline ()

# If the result is an empty string if cur_line == '' :

# We have reached the end of the file
break
print (cur_line)

Using the for loop iterator and readline() together is considered bad practice.
More commonly, the readlines() method is used to store an iterable collection
of the file's lines:

with open ("myfile.txt" , "r" ) as fp: lines = fp.readlines()

for i in range (len (lines)):
print ("Line " + str (i) + ": " + line)

This would print the following:

Line 0: hello Line 1: world

Section 30.3: Iterate files (recursively)

To iterate all files, including in sub directories, use os.walk:

import os
for root, folders, files in os .walk(root_dir):
for filename in files:
print root, filename
root_dir can be "." to start from current directory, or any other path to start
from.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5
If you also wish to get information about the file, you may use the more
efficient method os.scandir like so:
for entry in os .scandir(path):
if not entry.name.startswith('.' ) and entry.is_file(): print (entry.name)

Section 30.4: Getting the full contents of a file

The preferred method of file i/o is to use the with keyword. This will ensure
the file handle is closed once the reading or writing has been completed.
with open ('myfile.txt' ) as in_file:
content = in_file.read()
print (content)
or, to handle closing the file manually, you can forgo with and simply call
close yourself:

in_file = open ('myfile.txt' , 'r' ) content = in_file.read()

print (content)
in_file.close()
Keep in mind that without using a with statement, you might accidentally
keep the file open in case an unexpected exception arises like so:

in_file = open ('myfile.txt' , 'r' )

raise Exception ("oops" )
in_file.close() # This will never be called

Section 30.5: Writing to a file

with open ('myfile.txt' , 'w' ) as f:

f.write("Line 1" )
f.write("Line 2" )
f.write("Line 3" )
f.write("Line 4" )

If you open myfile.txt, you will see that its contents are:
Line 1Line 2Line 3Line 4
Python doesn't automatically add line breaks, you need to do that manually:

with open ('myfile.txt' , 'w' ) as f: f.write("Line 1 \n " )

f.write("Line 2 \n " )
f.write("Line 3 \n " )
f.write("Line 4 \n " )

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Do not use os .linesep as a line terminator when writing files opened in text
mode (the default); use \n instead.
If you want to specify an encoding, you simply add the encoding parameter
to the open function:
with open ('my_file.txt' , 'w' , encoding= 'utf-8' ) as f: f.write('utf-8 text' )

It is also possible to use the print statement to write to a file. The mechanics
are different in Python 2 vs Python 3, but the concept is the same in that you
can take the output that would have gone to the screen and send it to a file
instead.

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

with open ('fred.txt' , 'w' ) as outfile: s = "I'm Not Dead Yet!"
print (s) # writes to stdout
print (s, file = outfile) # writes to outfile
#Note: it is possible to specify the file parameter AND write to the screen #by
making sure file ends up with a None value either directly or via a variable

myfile = None
print (s, file = myfile) # writes to stdout print (s, file = None ) # writes to stdout

In Python 2 you would have done something like

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.0

outfile = open ('fred.txt' , 'w' )

s = "I'm Not Dead Yet!"
print s # writes to stdout
print >> outfile, s # writes to outfile

Unlike using the write function, the print function does automatically add line
breaks.

Section 30.6: Check whether a file or path exists

Employ the EAFP coding style and try to open it.
import errno

try :
with open (path) as f:
# File exists

except IOError as e:
# Raise the exception if it is not ENOENT (No such file or directory) if e.errno
!= errno .ENOENT:

raise
# No such file or directory
This will also avoid race-conditions if another process deleted the file
between the check and when it is used. This race condition could happen in
the following cases:
Using the os module:
import os
os .path.isfile('/path/to/some/file.txt' )
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.4
Using pathlib:

import pathlib
path = pathlib.Path('/path/to/some/file.txt' ) if path.is_file():

...
To check whether a given path exists or not, you can follow the above EAFP
procedure, or explicitly check the path:
import os
path = "/home/myFiles/directory1"
if os .path.exists(path): ## Do stuff

Section 30.7: Random File Access Using mmap

Using the mmap module allows the user to randomly access locations in a file
by mapping the file into memory. This is an alternative to using normal file
operations.
import mmap

with open ('filename.ext' , 'r' ) as fd: # 0: map the whole file

mm = mmap .mmap (fd.fileno(), 0 )

# print characters at indices 5 through 10 print mm[5 :10 ]

# print the line starting from mm's current position print mm.readline ()
# write a character to the 5th index mm[5 ] = 'a'
# return mm's position to the beginning of the file mm.seek(0 )
# close the mmap object mm.close()

Section 30.8: Replacing text in a file

import fileinput
replacements = {'Search1' : 'Replace1' ,
'Search2' : 'Replace2' }

for line in fileinput .input ('filename.txt' , inplace= True ): for search_for in

replacements:
replace_with = replacements[search_for] line = line.replace(search_for,
replace_with)

print (line, end= '' )

Section 30.9: Checking if a file is empty

>>> import os
>>> os .stat (path_to_file).st_size == 0
or
>>> import os
>>> os .path.getsize(path_to_file) > 0
However, both will throw an exception if the file does not exist. To avoid
having to catch such an error, do this:
import os
def is_empty_file(fpath):
return os .path.isfile(fpath) and os .path.getsize(fpath) > 0 which will return a
bool value.

Section 30.10: Read a file between a range of lines

So let's suppose you want to iterate only between some specific lines of a file
You can make use of itertools for that
import itertools
with open ('myfile.txt' , 'r' ) as f:
for line in itertools .islice(f, 12 , 30 ):
# do something here
This will read through the lines 13 to 20 as in python indexing starts from 0.
So line number 1 is indexed as 0
As can also read some extra lines by making use of the next() keyword here.
And when you are using the file object as an iterable, please don't use the
readline () statement here as the two techniques of traversing a file are not to
be mixed together

Section 30.11: Copy a directory tree

import shutil
source= '//192.168.1.2/Daily Reports'
destination= 'D: \\ Reports \\ Today'
shutil .copytree(source, destination)

The destination directory must not exist already.

Section 30.12: Copying contents of one file to a di ☐ erent file

with open (input_file, 'r' ) as in_file, open (output_file, 'w' ) as out_file:

for line in in_file:
out_file.write(line)
Using the shutil module:
import shutil
shutil .copyfile(src, dst)

Chapter 31: os.path

This module implements some useful functions on pathnames. The path
parameters can be passed as either strings, or bytes. Applications are
encouraged to represent file names as (Unicode) character strings.

Section 31.1: Join Paths

To join two or more path components together, firstly import os module of

python and then use following:
import os
os .path.join('a' , 'b' , 'c' )
The advantage of using os.path is that it allows code to remain compatible
over all operating systems, as this uses the separator appropriate for the
platform it's running on.
For example, the result of this command on Windows will be:
>>> os .path.join('a' , 'b' , 'c' )
'a \b\c '
In an Unix OS:
>>> os .path.join('a' , 'b' , 'c' )
'a/b/c'

Section 31.2: Path Component Manipulation

To split one component off of the path:

>>> p = os .path.join(os .getcwd(), 'foo.txt' )

>>> p
'/Users/csaftoiu/tmp/foo.txt'
>>> os .path.dirname(p)
'/Users/csaftoiu/tmp'
>>> os .path.basename(p)
'foo.txt'
>>> os .path.split(os .getcwd())
('/Users/csaftoiu/tmp' , 'foo.txt' )
>>> os .path.splitext(os .path.basename(p))
('foo' , '.txt' )

Section 31.3: Get the parent directory

os .path.abspath(os .path.join(PATH_TO_GET_THE_PARENT, os .pardir))

Section 31.4: If the given path exists

to check if the given path exists

path = '/home/john/temp'
os .path.exists(path)
#this returns false if path doesn't exist or if the path is a broken symbolic link

Section 31.5: check if the given path is a directory, file,

symbolic link, mount point etc
to check if the given path is a directory
dirname = '/home/john/python' os .path.isdir(dirname)
to check if the given path is a file
filename = dirname + 'main.py' os .path.isfile(filename)
to check if the given path is symbolic link
symlink = dirname + 'some_sym_link' os .path.islink(symlink)
to check if the given path is a mount point
mount_path = '/home'
os .path.ismount(mount_path)

Section 31.6: Absolute Path from Relative Path

Use os .path.abspath:

>>> os .getcwd()
'/Users/csaftoiu/tmp'
>>> os .path.abspath('foo' )
'/Users/csaftoiu/tmp/foo'
>>> os .path.abspath('../foo' )
'/Users/csaftoiu/foo'
>>> os .path.abspath('/foo' )
'/foo'

Chapter 32: Iterables and Iterators

Section 32.1: Iterator vs Iterable vs Generator

An iterable is an object that can return an iterator . Any object with state
that has an __iter__ method and returns an iterator is an iterable. It may also
be an object without state that implements a __getitem__ method. - The
method can take indices (starting from zero) and raise an IndexError when
the indices are no longer valid.

Python's str class is an example of a __getitem__ iterable.

An Iterator is an object that produces the next value in a sequence when you
call next(*object *) on some object. Moreover, any object with a __next__
method is an iterator. An iterator raises StopIteration after exhausting the
iterator and cannot be re-used at this point.

Iterable classes:
Iterable classes define an __iter__ and a __next__ method. Example of an
iterable class:
class MyIterable:
def __iter__ (self ):
return self
def __next__(self ):
#code
#Classic iterable object in older versions of python, __getitem__ is still
supported... class MySequence:
def __getitem__ (self , index):

if (condition):
raise IndexError
return (item)

#Can produce a plain `iterator` instance by using iter(MySequence())

Trying to instantiate the abstract class from the collections module to better
see this.
Example:
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3

import collections
>>> collections .Iterator()
>>> TypeError : Cant instantiate abstract class Iterator with abstract methods
next

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

>>> TypeError : Cant instantiate abstract class Iterator with abstract methods
__next__
Handle Python 3 compatibility for iterable classes in Python 2 by doing the
following:
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
class MyIterable(object ): #or collections.Iterator, which I'd recommend....
....
def __iter__ (self ):
return self
def next(self ): #code
__next__ = next
Both of these are now iterators and can be looped through:
ex1 = MyIterableClass() ex2 = MySequence()
for (item) in (ex1): #code for (item) in (ex2): #code Generators are simple
ways to create iterators. A generator is an iterator and an iterator is an
iterable.

Section 32.2: Extract values one by one

Start with iter () built-in to get iterator over iterable and use next() to get
elements one by one until StopIteration is raised signifying the end:

s = {1 , 2 } # or list or generator or even iterator i = iter (s) # get iterator

a = next(i) # a = 1
b = next(i) # b = 2
c = next(i) # raises StopIteration

Section 32.3: Iterating over entire iterable

s = {1 , 2 , 3 }
# get every element in s
for a in s:
print a # prints 1, then 2, then 3
# copy into list
l1 = list (s) # l1 = [1, 2, 3]
# use list comprehension
l2 = [a * 2 for a in s if a > 2 ] # l2 = [6]

Section 32.4: Verify only one element in iterable

Use unpacking to extract the first element and ensure it's the only one:
a, = iterable
def foo():
yield 1
a, = foo() # a = 1
nums = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
a, = nums # ValueError: too many values to unpack

Section 32.5: What can be iterable

Iterable can be anything for which items are received one by one, forward
only . Built-in Python collections are iterable:

[ 1 , 2 , 3 ] # list, iterate over items

(1 , 2 , 3 ) # tuple
{1 , 2 , 3 } # set
{1 : 2 , 3 : 4 } # dict, iterate over keys

Generators return iterables:

def foo(): # foo isn't iterable yet... yield 1
res = foo() # ...but res already is

Section 32.6: Iterator isn't reentrant!

def gen():
yield 1
iterable = gen()
for a in iterable:
print a

# What was the first item of iterable? No way to get it now. # Only to get a
new iterator
gen()

Chapter 33: Functions

Parameter Details
arg1 , ..., argN Regular arguments
*args Unnamed positional arguments
kw1 , ..., kwN Keyword-only arguments
**kwargs The rest of keyword arguments
Functions in Python provide organized, reusable and modular code to
perform a set of specific actions. Functions simplify the coding process,
prevent redundant logic, and make the code easier to follow. This topic
describes the declaration and utilization of functions in Python.

Python has many built-in functions like print (), input (), len (). Besides
built-ins you can also create your own functions to do more specific jobs—
these are called user-defined functions .

Section 33.1: Defining and calling simple functions

Using the def statement is the most common way to define a function in
python. This statement is a so called single clause compound statement with
the following syntax:
def function_name(parameters): statement(s)
function_name is known as the identifier of the function. Since a function
definition is an executable statement its execution binds the function name to
the function object which can be called later on using the identifier.
parameters is an optional list of identifiers that get bound to the values
supplied as arguments when the function is called. A function may have an
arbitrary number of arguments which are separated by commas.
statement(s) – also known as the function body – are a nonempty sequence of
statements executed each time the function is called. This means a function
body cannot be empty, just like any indented block .
Here’s an example of a simple function definition which purpose is to print
Hello each time it’s called:
def greet():
print ("Hello" )
Now let’s call the defined greet() function:
greet()
# Out: Hello
That’s another example of a function definition which takes one single
argument and displays the passed in value each time the function is called:
def greet_two(greeting): print (greeting)
After that the greet_two() function must be called with an argument:
greet_two("Howdy" ) # Out: Howdy
Also you can give a default value to that function argument:
def greet_two(greeting= "Howdy" ): print (greeting)
Now you can call the function without giving a value:
greet_two() # Out: Howdy

You'll notice that unlike many other languages, you do not need to explicitly
declare a return type of the function. Python functions can return values of
any type via the return keyword. One function can return any number of
different types!

def many_types(x):
if x < 0 :
return "Hello!" else :
return 0
print (many_types(1 )) print (many_types(1 ))

# Output: 0
Hello!

As long as this is handled correctly by the caller, this is perfectly valid

Python code.
A function that reaches the end of execution without a return statement will
always return None :
def do_nothing(): pass
print (do_nothing()) # Out: None

As mentioned previously a function definition must have a function body, a

nonempty sequence of statements. Therefore the pass statement is used as
function body, which is a null operation – when it is executed, nothing
happens. It does what it means, it skips. It is useful as a placeholder when a
statement is required syntactically, but no code needs to be executed.

Section 33.2: Defining a function with an arbitrary number of

arguments
Arbitrary number of positional arguments:
Defining a function capable of taking an arbitrary number of arguments can
be done by prefixing one of the arguments with a *
def func(*args):
# args will be a tuple containing all values that are passed in
for i in args:

print (i)

func( 1 , 2 , 3 ) # Calling it with 3 arguments

# Out: 1
#2
#3

list_of_arg_values = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
func(*list_of_arg_values) # Calling it with list of values, * expands the list #
Out: 1
#2
#3

func() # Calling it without arguments # No Output

You can't provide a default for args, for example func(*args= [1 , 2 , 3 ]) will
raise a syntax error (won't even compile).
You can't provide these by name when calling the function, for example
func(*args= [1 , 2 , 3 ]) will raise a TypeError .
But if you already have your arguments in an array (or any other Iterable),
you can invoke your function like this: func(*my_stuff).
These arguments (*args) can be accessed by index, for example args[0 ] will
return the first argument
Arbitrary number of keyword arguments
You can take an arbitrary number of arguments with a name by defining an
argument in the definition with two * in front of it:

def func(**kwargs):
# kwargs will be a dictionary containing the names as keys and the values as
values for name, value in kwargs.items():

print (name, value)

func(value1 = 1 , value2= 2 , value3= 3 ) # Out: value1 1

# value2 2
# value3 3
# Calling it with 3 arguments

func()
# No Out put # Calling it without arguments

my_dict = {'foo' : 1 , 'bar' : 2 } func(**my_dict)

# Out: foo 1
# bar 2
# Calling it with a dictionary

You can't provide these without names, for example func(1 , 2 , 3 ) will raise a
TypeError .
kwargs is a plain native python dictionary. For example, args['value1' ] will
give the value for argument value1. Be sure to check beforehand that there is
such an argument or a KeyError will be raised.
Warning
You can mix these with other optional and required arguments but the order
inside the definition matters.

The positional/keyword arguments come first. (Required arguments). Then

comes the arbitrary *arg arguments. (Optional).
Then keyword-only arguments come next. (Required). Finally the arbitrary
keyword **kwargs come. (Optional).

# |-positional-|-optional-|---keyword-only--|-optional-| def func(arg1, arg2= 10

, *args, kwarg1, kwarg2= 2 , **kwargs): pass

arg1 must be given, otherwise a TypeError is raised. It can be given as

positional (func(10 )) or keyword argument (func(arg1= 10 )).
kwarg1 must also be given, but it can only be provided as keyword-argument:
func(kwarg1= 10 ). arg2 and kwarg2 are optional. If the value is to be
changed the same rules as for arg1 (either positional or keyword) and kwarg1
(only keyword) apply.
*args catches additional positional parameters. But note, that arg1 and arg2
must be provided as positional arguments to pass arguments to *args: func(1 ,
1 , 1 , 1 ).
**kwargs catches all additional keyword parameters. In this case any
parameter that is not arg1, arg2, kwarg1 or kwarg2. For example:
func(kwarg3= 10 ).
In Python 3, you can use * alone to indicate that all subsequent arguments
must be specified as keywords. For instance the math .isclose function in
Python 3.5 and higher is defined using def math .isclose (a, b, *, rel_tol= 1e-09
, abs_tol= 0.0 ), which means the first two arguments can be supplied
positionally but the optional third and fourth parameters can only be supplied
as keyword arguments.

Python 2.x doesn't support keyword-only parameters. This behavior can be

emulated with kwargs:
def func(arg1, arg2= 10 , **kwargs): try :
kwarg1 = kwargs.pop("kwarg1" )
except KeyError :
raise TypeError ("missing required keyword-only argument: 'kwarg1'" )
kwarg2 = kwargs.pop("kwarg2" , 2 ) # function body ...
Note on Naming

The convention of naming optional positional arguments args and optional

keyword arguments kwargs is just a convention you can use any names you
like but it is useful to follow the convention so that others know what you are
doing, or even yourself later so please do.

Note on Uniqueness

Any function can be defined with none or one *args and none or one
**kwargs but not with more than one of each. Also *argsmust be the last
positional argument and **kwargs must be the last parameter. Attempting to
use more than one of either will result in a Syntax Error exception.

Note on Nesting Functions with Optional Arguments

It is possible to nest such functions and the usual convention is to remove the
items that the code has already handled but if you are passing down the
parameters you need to pass optional positional args with a * prefix and
optional keyword args with a ** prefix, otherwise args with be passed as a
list or tuple and kwargs as a single dictionary. e.g.:
def fn(**kwargs): print (kwargs) f1(**kwargs)

def f1(**kwargs):
print (len (kwargs))

fn(a = 1 , b= 2 )
# Out:
# {'a': 1, 'b': 2} # 2

Section 33.3: Lambda (Inline/Anonymous) Functions

The lambda keyword creates an inline function that contains a single

expression. The value of this expression is what the function returns when
invoked.
Consider the function:
def greeting():
return "Hello"
which, when called as:
print (greeting())
prints:
Hello
This can be written as a lambda function as follows:
greet_me = lambda : "Hello"
See note at the bottom of this section regarding the assignment of lambdas to
variables. Generally, don't do it.
This creates an inline function with the name greet_me that returns Hello.
Note that you don't write return when creating a function with lambda. The
value after : is automatically returned.
Once assigned to a variable, it can be used just like a regular function:
print (greet_me())
prints:
Hello
lambda s can take arguments, too:
strip_and_upper_case = lambda s: s.strip().upper()
strip_and_upper_case(" Hello " )
returns the string:
HELLO
They can also take arbitrary number of arguments / keyword arguments, like
normal functions.
greeting = lambda x, *args, **kwargs: print (x, args, kwargs) greeting('hello'
, 'world' , world= 'world' )
prints:
hello ('world' , ) {'world' : 'world' }
lambda s are commonly used for short functions that are convenient to
define at the point where they are called (typically with sorted , filter and map
).
For example, this line sorts a list of strings ignoring their case and ignoring
whitespace at the beginning and at the end:

sorted ( [" foo " , " bAR" , "BaZ " ], key= lambda s: s.strip().upper()) # Out:
# [' bAR', 'BaZ ', ' foo ']

Sort list just ignoring whitespaces:

sorted ( [" foo " , " bAR" , "BaZ " ], key= lambda s: s.strip()) # Out:
# ['BaZ ', ' bAR', ' foo ']

Examples with map :

sorted ( map ( lambda s: s.strip().upper(), [" foo " , " bAR" , "BaZ " ])) # Out:
# ['BAR', 'BAZ', 'FOO']

sorted ( map ( lambda s: s.strip(), [" foo " , " bAR" , "BaZ " ])) # Out:
# ['BaZ', 'bAR', 'foo']

Examples with numerical lists:

my_list = [3 , 4 , 2 , 5 , 1 , 7 ]
sorted ( my_list, key= lambda x: abs (x)) # Out:
# [1, -2, 3, -4, 5, 7]

list ( filter ( lambda x: x> 0 , my_list)) # Out:

# [3, 5, 1, 7]

list ( map ( lambda x: abs (x), my_list)) # Out:

[3 , 4 , 2 , 5 , 1 , 7 ]

One can call other functions (with/without arguments) from inside a lambda
function.
def foo(msg): print (msg)
greet = lambda x = "hello world" : foo(x) greet()
prints:
hello world
This is useful because lambda may contain only one expression and by using
a subsidiary function one can run multiple statements.
NOTE
Bear in mind that PEP-8 (the official Python style guide) does not
recommend assigning lambdas to variables (as we did in the first two
examples):
Always use a def statement instead of an assignment statement that binds a
lambda expression directly to an identifier.
Yes:
def f(x): return 2 *x
No:
f = lambda x: 2 *x

The first form means that the name of the resulting function object is
specifically f instead of the generic <lambda> . This is more useful for
tracebacks and string representations in general. The use of the assignment
statement eliminates the sole benefit a lambda expression can offer over an
explicit def statement (i.e. that it can be embedded inside a larger
expression).

Section 33.4: Defining a function with optional arguments

Optional arguments can be defined by assigning (using =) a default value to
the argument-name:
def make(action= 'nothing' ):
return action
Calling this function is possible in 3 different ways:
make("fun" ) # Out: fun
make(action= "sleep" ) # Out: sleep
# The argument is optional so the function will use the default value if the
argument is # not passed in.
make()
# Out: nothing

Warning

Mutable types ( list , dict , set , etc.) should be treated with care when given
as default attribute. Any mutation of the default argument will change it
permanently. See Defining a function with optional mutable arguments.

Section 33.5: Defining a function with optional mutable

arguments
There is a problem when using optional arguments with a mutable default
type (described in Defining a function with optional arguments), which can
potentially lead to unexpected behaviour.
Explanation

This problem arises because a function's default arguments are initialised

once , at the point when the function is defined , and not (like many other
languages) when the function is called . The default values are stored inside
the function object's __defaults__ member variable.

def f(a, b= 42 , c= []):

pass
print (f.__defaults__)
# Out: (42, [])

For immutable types (see Argument passing and mutability) this is not a
problem because there is no way to mutate the variable; it can only ever be
reassigned, leaving the original value unchanged. Hence, subsequent are
guaranteed to have the same default value. However, for a mutable type, the
original value can mutate, by making calls to its various member functions.
Therefore, successive calls to the function are not guaranteed to have the
initial default value.

def append(elem, to= []):

to.append(elem) # This call to append() mutates the default variable "to"
return to

append(1 ) # Out: [1]

append(2 ) # Appends it to the internally stored list # Out: [1, 2]
append(3 , []) # Using a new created list gives the expected result # Out: [3]

# Calling it again without argument will append to the internally stored list
again append(4 )
# Out: [1, 2, 4]

Note: Some IDEs like PyCharm will issue a warning when a mutable type is
specified as a default attribute.
Solution
If you want to ensure that the default argument is always the one you specify
in the function definition, then the solution is to always use an immutable
type as your default argument.
A common idiom to achieve this when a mutable type is needed as the
default, is to use None (immutable) as the default argument and then assign
the actual default value to the argument variable if it is equal to None .
def append(elem, to= None ): if to is None :
to = []
to.append(elem) return to

Section 33.6: Argument passing and mutability

First, some terminology:

argument ( actual parameter): the actual variable being passed to a function;
parameter ( formal parameter): the receiving variable that is used in a
function.
In Python, arguments are passed by assignment (as opposed to other
languages, where arguments can be passed by value/reference/pointer).
Mutating a parameter will mutate the argument (if the argument's type is
mutable).

def foo(x): # here x is the parameter

x[0 ] = 9 # This mutates the list labelled by both x and y print (x)
y = [4 , 5 , 6 ]
foo(y) # call foo with y as argument # Out: [9, 5, 6] # list labelled by x has
been mutated print (y)
# Out: [9, 5, 6] # list labelled by y has been mutated too

Reassigning the parameter won’t reassign the argument.

def foo(x): # here x is the parameter, when we call foo(y) we assign y to x x[0
] = 9 # This mutates the list labelled by both x and y x = [1 , 2 , 3 ] # x is now
labeling a different list (y is unaffected) x[2 ] = 8 # This mutates x's list, not y's
list

y = [4 , 5 , 6 ] # y is the argument, x is the parameter foo(y) # Pretend that we

wrote "x = y", then go to line 1 y
# Out: [9, 5, 6]

In Python, we don ’t really assign values to variables, instead we bind (i.e.

assign, attach) variables (considered as names ) to objects.
Immutable: Integers, strings, tuples, and so on. All operations make copies.
Mutable: Lists, dictionaries, sets, and so on. Operations may or may not
mutate.

x = [3 , 1 , 9 ]
y=x
x.append(5 ) # Mutates the list labelled by x and y, both x and y are bound to
[3, 1, 9] x.sort() # Mutates the list labelled by x and y (in-place sorting) x = x
+ [4 ] # Does not mutate the list (makes a copy for x only, not y) z = x # z is x
([1, 3, 9, 4])
x += [6 ] # Mutates the list labelled by both x and z (uses the extend
function). x = sorted (x) # Does not mutate the list (makes a copy for x only).
x
# Out: [1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9]
y
# Out: [1, 3, 5, 9]
z

# Out: [1, 3, 5, 9, 4, 6]
Section 33.7: Returning values from functions

Functions can return a value that you can use directly:

def give_me_five():
return 5
print (give_me_five()) # Print the returned value
# Out: 5
or save the value for later use:

num = give_me_five()
print (num) # Print the saved returned value # Out: 5

or use the value for any operations:

print (give_me_five() + 10 ) # Out: 15
If return is encountered in the function the function will be exited
immediately and subsequent operations will not be evaluated:

def give_me_another_five():
return 5
print ('This statement will not be printed. Ever.' )

print (give_me_another_five()) # Out: 5

You can also return multiple values (in the form of a tuple):
def give_me_two_fives():
return 5 , 5 # Returns two 5

first , second = give_me_two_fives() print (first)

# Out: 5
print (second)
# Out: 5

A function with no return statement implicitly returns None . Similarly a

function with a return statement, but no return value or variable returns
None .

Section 33.8: Closure

Closures in Python are created by function calls. Here, the call to makeInc
creates a binding for x that is referenced inside the function inc. Each call to
makeInc creates a new instance of this function, but each instance has a link
to a different binding of x.

def makeInc(x):
def inc(y):
# x is "attached" in the definition of inc
return y + x
return inc
incOne = makeInc(1 ) incFive = makeInc(5 )
incOne(5 ) # returns 6 incFive(5 ) # returns 10

Notice that while in a regular closure the enclosed function fully inherits all
variables from its enclosing environment, in this construct the enclosed
function has only read access to the inherited variables but cannot make
assignments to them

def makeInc(x):
def inc(y):
# incrementing x is not allowed x += y
return x

return inc
incOne = makeInc(1 )
incOne(5 ) # UnboundLocalError: local variable 'x' referenced before
assignment
Python 3 offers the nonlocal statement (Nonlocal Variables ) for realizing a
full closure with nested functions.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

def makeInc(x):
def inc(y):
nonlocal x
# now assigning a value to x is allowed x += y
return x

return inc
incOne = makeInc(1 ) incOne(5 ) # returns 6
Section 33.9: Forcing the use of named parameters

All parameters specified after the first asterisk in the function signature are
keyword-only.
def f(*a, b):
pass
f(1 , 2 , 3 )
# TypeError: f() missing 1 required keyword-only argument: 'b'
In Python 3 it's possible to put a single asterisk in the function signature to
ensure that the remaining arguments may only be passed using keyword
arguments.
def f(a, b, *, c): pass
f(1 , 2 , 3 )
# TypeError: f() takes 2 positional arguments but 3 were given
f(1 , 2 , c= 3 ) # No error

Section 33.10: Nested functions

Functions in python are first-class objects. They can be defined in any scope
def fibonacci(n):
def step(a, b):
return b, a+b
a, b = 0 , 1
for i in range (n):
a, b = step(a, b)
return a
Functions capture their enclosing scope can be passed around like any other
sort of object
def make_adder(n): def adder(x): return n + x

return adder
add5 = make_adder(5 ) add6 = make_adder(6 ) add5(10 )
#Out: 15
add6(10 )
#Out: 16

def repeatedly_apply(func, n, x): for i in range (n):

x = func(x)

return x
repeatedly_apply(add5, 5 , 1 ) #Out: 26

Section 33.11: Recursion limit

There is a limit to the depth of possible recursion, which depends on the
Python implementation. When the limit is reached, a RuntimeError exception
is raised:
def cursing(depth):
try :
cursing(depth + 1 ) # actually, re-cursing
except RuntimeError as RE:
print ('I recursed {} times!' .format(depth))
cursing(0 )
# Out: I recursed 1083 times!
It is possible to change the recursion depth limit by using sys
.setrecursionlimit(limit) and check this limit by sys .getrecursionlimit().

sys .setrecursionlimit(2000 ) cursing(0 )

# Out: I recursed 1997 times!

From Python 3.5, the exception is a RecursionError, which is derived from

RuntimeError .

Section 33.12: Recursive Lambda using assigned variable

One method for creating recursive lambda functions involves assigning the
function to a variable and then referencing that variable within the function
itself. A common example of this is the recursive calculation of the factorial
of a number - such as shown in the following code:

lambda_factorial = lambda i:1 if i== 0 else i*lambda_factorial(i1 ) print

(lambda_factorial(4 )) # 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 12 * 2 = 24
Description of code
The lambda function, through its variable assignment, is passed a value (4)
which it evaluates and returns 1 if it is 0 or else it returns the current value (i)
* another calculation by the lambda function of the value - 1 (i1 ). This
continues until the passed value is decremented to 0 (return 1 ). A process
which can be visualized as:

Section 33.13: Recursive functions

A recursive function is a function that calls itself in its definition. For
example the mathematical function, factorial, defined by factorial(n) = n*(n1
)*(n2 )*...*3 *2 *1 . can be programmed as
def factorial(n):
#n here should be an integer if n == 0 :
return 1
else :
return n*factorial(n1 )
the outputs here are:

factorial( 0 ) #out 1
factorial(1 ) #out 1
factorial(2 ) #out 2
factorial(3 ) #out 6

as expected. Notice that this function is recursive because the second return
factorial(n1 ), where the function calls itself in its definition.
Some recursive functions can be implemented using lambda, the factorial
function using lambda would be something like this:
factorial = lambda n: 1 if n == 0 else n*factorial(n1 ) The function outputs the
same as above.

Section 33.14: Defining a function with arguments

Arguments are defined in parentheses after the function name:

def divide(dividend, divisor): # The names of the function and its arguments
# The arguments are available by name in the body of the function print
(dividend / divisor)

The function name and its list of arguments are called the signature of the
function. Each named argument is effectively a local variable of the function.
When calling the function, give values for the arguments by listing them in
order
divide(10 , 2 ) # output: 5
or specify them in any order using the names from the function definition:
divide(divisor= 2 , dividend= 10 ) # output: 5

Section 33.15: Iterable and dictionary unpacking

Functions allow you to specify these types of parameters: positional, named,
variable positional, Keyword args (kwargs). Here is a clear and concise use
of each type.
def unpacking(a, b, c= 45 , d= 60 , *args, **kwargs):
print (a, b, c, d, args, kwargs)

>>> unpacking(1 , 2 )
1 2 45 60 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) 1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , c= 3 , d= 4 ) 1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , d= 4 , c= 3 ) 1 2 3 4 () {}

>>> pair = (3 , )
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , *pair, d= 4 )
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , d= 4 , *pair)
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , *pair, c= 3 )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'c' >>>
unpacking(1 , 2 , c= 3 , *pair)
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'c'

>>> args_list = [3 ]
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , *args_list, d= 4 )
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , d= 4 , *args_list)
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , c= 3 , *args_list)
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'c' >>>
unpacking(1 , 2 , *args_list, c= 3 )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'c'

>>> pair = (3 , 4 )
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , *pair)
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , *pair)
1 2 3 4 (3 , 4 ) {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , d= 4 , *pair)
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'd' >>>
unpacking(1 , 2 , *pair, d= 4 )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'd'

>>> args_list = [3 , 4 ]
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , *args_list) 1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , *args_list) 1 2 3 4 (3 , 4 ) {}

>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , d= 4 , *args_list)

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'd' >>>
unpacking(1 , 2 , *args_list, d= 4 )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'd'

>>> arg_dict = {'c' :3 , 'd' :4 }

>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , **arg_dict)
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> arg_dict = {'d' :4 , 'c' :3 }
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , **arg_dict)
1 2 3 4 () {}
>>> arg_dict = {'c' :3 , 'd' :4 , 'not_a_parameter' : 75 } >>> unpacking(1 , 2 ,
**arg_dict)
1 2 3 4 () {'not_a_parameter' : 75 }

>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , *pair, **arg_dict)

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'd' >>>
unpacking(1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , **arg_dict)
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'd'

# Positional arguments take priority over any other form of argument passing
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , **arg_dict, c= 3 )
1 2 3 4 () {'not_a_parameter' : 75 }
>>> unpacking(1 , 2 , 3 , **arg_dict, c= 3 )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

TypeError : unpacking() got multiple values for argument 'c'

Section 33.16: Defining a function with multiple arguments

One can give a function as many arguments as one wants, the only fixed rules
are that each argument name must be unique and that optional arguments
must be after the not-optional ones:
def func(value1, value2, optionalvalue= 10 ):
return '{0} {1} {2}' .format(value1, value2, optionalvalue1)
When calling the function you can either give each keyword without the
name but then the order matters:
print (func(1 , 'a' , 100 )) # Out: 1 a 100
print (func('abc' , 14 )) # abc 14 10
Or combine giving the arguments with name and without. Then the ones with
name must follow those without but the order of the ones with name doesn't
matter:
print (func('This' , optionalvalue= 'StackOverflow Documentation' , value2= 'is'
)) # Out: This is StackOverflow Documentation

Chapter 34: Defining functions with list arguments

Section 34.1: Function and Call

Lists as arguments are just another variable:

def func(myList):
for item in myList:
print (item)

and can be passed in the function call itself:

func([1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 7 ])

1
2
3
5
7

Or as a variable:
aList = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' ]
func(aList)

a
b
c
d

Chapter 35: Functional Programming in Python

Functional programming decomposes a problem into a set of functions.
Ideally, functions only take inputs and produce outputs, and don’t have any
internal state that affects the output produced for a given input.below are
functional techniques common to many languages: such as lambda, map,
reduce.

Section 35.1: Lambda Function

An anonymous, inlined function defined with lambda. The parameters of the

lambda are defined to the left of the colon. The function body is defined to
the right of the colon. The result of running the function body is (implicitly)
returned.

s= lambda x:x*x
s(2 ) => 4

Section 35.2: Map Function

Map takes a function and a collection of items. It makes a new, empty

collection, runs the function on each item in the original collection and inserts
each return value into the new collection. It returns the new collection.
This is a simple map that takes a list of names and returns a list of the lengths
of those names:
name_lengths = map (len , ["Mary" , "Isla" , "Sam" ])
print (name_lengths) => [4 , 4 , 3 ]

Section 35.3: Reduce Function

Reduce takes a function and a collection of items. It returns a value that is

created by combining the items.
This is a simple reduce. It returns the sum of all the items in the collection.
total = reduce (lambda a, x: a + x, [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ])
print (total) => 10

Section 35.4: Filter Function

Filter takes a function and a collection. It returns a collection of every item

for which the function returned True.
arr= [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]
[i for i in filter (lambda x:x> 4 , arr)] # outputs[5,6]

Chapter 36: Partial functions

Param details
x the number to be raised
y the exponent
raise the function to be specialized

As you probably know if you came from OOP school, specializing an

abstract class and use it is a practice you should keep in mind when writing
your code.
What if you could define an abstract function and specialize it in order to
create different versions of it? Thinks it as a sort of function Inheritance
where you bind specific params to make them reliable for a specific scenario.

Section 36.1: Raise the power

Let's suppose we want raise x to a number y .
You'd write this as:
def raise_power(x, y):
return x**y
What if your y value can assume a finite set of values?

Let's suppose y can be one of [3,4,5] and let's say you don't want offer end
user the possibility to use such function since it is very computationally
intensive. In fact you would check if provided y assumes a valid value and
rewrite your function as:

def raise (x, y):

if y in (3 , 4 , 5 ):
return x**y
raise NumberNotInRangeException("You should provide a valid exponent" )
Messy? Let's use the abstract form and specialize it to all three cases: let's
implement them partially .
from functors import partial
raise_to_three = partial(raise , y= 3 ) raise_to_four = partial(raise , y= 4 )
raise_to_five = partial(raise , y= 5 )

What happens here? We fixed the y params and we defined three different
functions.
No need to use the abstract function defined above (you could make it private
) but you could use partial applied functions to deal with raising a number to
a fixed value.

Chapter 37: Decorators

Parameter Details
f The function to be decorated (wrapped)

Decorator functions are software design patterns. They dynamically alter the
functionality of a function, method, or class without having to directly use
subclasses or change the source code of the decorated function. When used
correctly, decorators can become powerful tools in the development process.
This topic covers implementation and applications of decorator functions in
Python.

Section 37.1: Decorator function

Decorators augment the behavior of other functions or methods. Any function
that takes a function as a parameter and returns an augmented function can be
used as a decorator .

# This simplest decorator does nothing to the function being decorated. Such
# minimal decorators can occasionally be used as a kind of code markers.
def super_secret_function(f):

return f
@ super_secret_function
def my_function():
print ("This is my secret function." )
The @-notation is syntactic sugar that is equivalent to the following:
my_function = super_secret_function(my_function)

It is important to bear this in mind in order to understand how the decorators

work. This "unsugared" syntax makes it clear why the decorator function
takes a function as an argument, and why it should return another function. It
also demonstrates what would happen if you don't return a function:

def disabled(f):
"""
This function returns nothing, and hence removes the decorated function
from the local scope.
"""
pass

@ disabled
def my_function():
print ("This function can no longer be called..." ) my_function()
# TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

Thus, we usually define a new function inside the decorator and return it. This
new function would first do something that it needs to do, then call the
original function, and finally process the return value. Consider this simple
decorator function that prints the arguments that the original function
receives, then calls it.

#This is the decorator

def print_args(func):
def inner_func(*args, **kwargs): print (args)
print (kwargs)
return func(*args, **kwargs) #Call the original function with its arguments.
return inner_func
@ print_args
def multiply(num_a, num_b): return num_a * num_b

print (multiply(3 , 5 ))
#Output:
# (3,5) - This is actually the 'args' that the function receives. # {} - This is the
'kwargs', empty because we didn't specify keyword arguments. # 15 - The
result of the function.

Section 37.2: Decorator class

As mentioned in the introduction, a decorator is a function that can be applied

to another function to augment its behavior. The syntactic sugar is equivalent
to the following: my_func = decorator(my_func). But what if the decorator
was instead a class? The syntax would still work, except that now my_func
gets replaced with an instance of the decorator class. If this class implements
the __call__ () magic method, then it would still be possible to use my_func
as if it was a function:

class Decorator(object ):
"""Simple decorator class."""
def __init__ (self , func): self .func = func

def __call__ (self , *args, **kwargs): print ('Before the function call.' ) res =
self .func(*args, **kwargs) print ('After the function call.' ) return res

@ Decorator
def testfunc():
print ('Inside the function.' )

testfunc()
# Before the function call. # Inside the function. # After the function call.

Note that a function decorated with a class decorator will no longer be

considered a "function" from type-checking perspective:

import types
isinstance (testfunc, types .FunctionType) # False
type (testfunc)
# <class '__main__.Decorator'>

Decorating Methods
For decorating methods you need to define an additional __get__ -method:
from types import MethodType
class Decorator(object ): def __init__ (self , func):
self .func = func

def __call__ (self , *args, **kwargs): print ('Inside the decorator.' ) return self
.func(*args, **kwargs)

def __get__ (self , instance, cls):

# Return a Method if it is called on an instance
return self if instance is None else MethodType(self , instance)

class Test(object ): @ Decorator

def __init__ (self ):

pass
a = Test()
Inside the decorator.
Warning!
Class Decorators only produce one instance for a specific function so
decorating a method with a class decorator will share the same decorator
between all instances of that class:
from types import MethodType

class CountCallsDecorator(object ):
def __init__ (self , func):
self .func = func
self .ncalls = 0 # Number of calls of this method

def __call__ (self , *args, **kwargs):

self .ncalls += 1 # Increment the calls counter return self .func(*args,
**kwargs)

def __get__ (self , instance, cls):

return self if instance is None else MethodType(self , instance)
class Test(object ): def __init__ (self ): pass
@ CountCallsDecorator
def do_something(self ):
return 'something was done'

a = Test()
a.do_something()
a.do_something.ncalls # 1 b = Test()
b.do_something()
b.do_something.ncalls # 2

Section 37.3: Decorator with arguments (decorator factory)

A decorator takes just one argument: the function to be decorated. There is no
way to pass other arguments.
But additional arguments are often desired. The trick is then to make a
function which takes arbitrary arguments and returns a decorator.
Decorator functions
def decoratorfactory(message):
def decorator(func):
def wrapped_func(*args, **kwargs):
print ('The decorator wants to tell you: {}' .format(message)) return
func(*args, **kwargs)
return wrapped_func
return decorator
@ decoratorfactory('Hello World' ) def test ():
pass
test ()
The decorator wants to tell you: Hello World
Important Note:
With such decorator factories you must call the decorator with a pair of
parentheses:
@ decoratorfactory # Without parentheses def test ():
pass
test ()
TypeError: decorator() missing 1 required positional argument: 'func'
Decorator classes
def decoratorfactory(*decorator_args, **decorator_kwargs):

class Decorator(object ): def __init__ (self , func): self .func = func

def __call__ (self , *args, **kwargs):

print ('Inside the decorator with arguments {}' .format(decorator_args))
return self .func(*args, **kwargs)

return Decorator
@ decoratorfactory(10 ) def test ():
pass
test () Inside the decorator with arguments (10,)

Section 37.4: Making a decorator look like the decorated

function

Decorators normally strip function metadata as they aren't the same. This can
cause problems when using metaprogramming to dynamically access
function metadata. Metadata also includes function's docstrings and its name.
functools. wraps makes the decorated function look like the original function
by copying several attributes to the wrapper function.

from functools import wraps

The two methods of wrapping a decorator are achieving the same thing in
hiding that the original function has been decorated. There is no reason to
prefer the function version to the class version unless you're already using
one over the other.

As a function

def decorator(func):
# Copies the docstring, name, annotations and module to the decorator @
wraps(func)
def wrapped_func(*args, **kwargs):

return func(*args, **kwargs)

return wrapped_func
@ decorator def test (): pass
test .__name__
'test'
As a class

class Decorator(object ):
def __init__ (self , func):
# Copies name, module, annotations and docstring to the instance. self
._wrapped = wraps(func)(self )

def __call__ (self , *args, **kwargs): return self ._wrapped(*args, **kwargs)

@ Decorator
def test ():
"""Docstring of test."""
pass

test .__doc__ 'Docstring of test.'

Section 37.5: Using a decorator to time a function

import time
def timer(func):
def inner(*args, **kwargs):

t1 = time .time ()
f = func(*args, **kwargs)
t2 = time .time ()
print 'Runtime took {0} seconds' .format(t2-t1) return f

return inner
@ timer
def example_function(): #do stuff
example_function()

Section 37.6: Create singleton class with a decorator

A singleton is a pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to one

instance/object. Using a decorator, we can define a class as a singleton by
forcing the class to either return an existing instance of the class or create a
new instance (if it doesn't exist).

def singleton(cls):
instance = [None ]
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):

if instance[0 ] is None :
instance[0 ] = cls(*args, **kwargs)
return instance[0 ]

return wrapper
This decorator can be added to any class declaration and will make sure that
at most one instance of the class is created. Any subsequent calls will return
the already existing class instance.

@ singleton
class SomeSingletonClass: x = 2
def __init__ (self ): print ("Created!" )

instance = SomeSingletonClass() # prints: Created! instance =

SomeSingletonClass() # doesn't print anything print (instance.x) # 2

instance.x = 3
print (SomeSingletonClass().x) # 3
So it doesn't matter whether you refer to the class instance via your local
variable or whether you create another "instance", you always get the same
object.

Chapter 38: Classes

Python offers itself not only as a popular scripting language, but also supports
the object-oriented programming paradigm. Classes describe data and
provide methods to manipulate that data, all encompassed under a single
object. Furthermore, classes allow for abstraction by separating concrete
implementation details from abstract representations of data.

Code utilizing classes is generally easier to read, understand, and maintain.

Section 38.1: Introduction to classes

A class, functions as a template that defines the basic characteristics of a
particular object. Here's an example:

class Person(object ):
"""A simple class.""" # docstring
species = "Homo Sapiens" # class attribute

def __init__ (self , name): # special method

"""This is the initializer. It's a special
method (see below).
"""
self .name = name # instance attribute

def __str__ (self ): # special method

"""This method is run when Python tries
to cast the object to a string. Return
this string when using print(), etc.
"""
return self .name

def rename(self , renamed): # regular method

"""Reassign and print the name attribute."""
self .name = renamed
print ("Now my name is {}" .format(self .name))

There are a few things to note when looking at the above example.

1. The class is made up of attributes (data) and methods (functions).

2. Attributes and methods are simply defined as normal variables and
functions.
3. As noted in the corresponding docstring, the __init__ () method is called
the initializer . It's equivalent to the constructor in other object oriented
languages, and is the method that is first run when you create a new object, or
new instance of the class.
4. Attributes that apply to the whole class are defined first, and are called
class attributes .
5. Attributes that apply to a specific instance of a class (an object) are called
instance attributes . They are generally defined inside __init__ (); this is not
necessary, but it is recommended (since attributes defined outside of __init__
() run the risk of being accessed before they are defined).
6. Every method, included in the class definition passes the object in question
as its first parameter. The word self is used for this parameter (usage of self is
actually by convention, as the word self has no inherent meaning in Python,
but this is one of Python's most respected conventions, and you should
always follow it).
7. Those used to object-oriented programming in other languages may be
surprised by a few things. One is that Python has no real concept of private
elements, so everything, by default, imitates the behavior of the C++/Java
public keyword. For more information, see the "Private Class Members"
example on this page.
8. Some of the class's methods have the following form:
__functionname__(self , other_stuff). All such methods are called "magic
methods" and are an important part of classes in Python. For instance,
operator overloading in Python is implemented with magic methods. For
more information, see the relevant documentation.

Now let's make a few instances of our Person class!

>>> # Instances
>>> kelly = Person("Kelly" ) >>> joseph = Person("Joseph" ) >>> john_doe
= Person("John Doe" )

We currently have three Person objects, kelly, joseph, and john_doe.

We can access the attributes of the class from each instance using the dot
operator . Note again the difference between class and instance attributes:

>>> # Attributes
>>> kelly.species 'Homo Sapiens'
>>> john_doe.species 'Homo Sapiens'
>>> joseph.species 'Homo Sapiens'
>>> kelly.name
'Kelly'
>>> joseph.name
'Joseph'

We can execute the methods of the class using the same dot operator .:
>>> # Methods
>>> john_doe.__str__ ()
'John Doe'
>>> print (john_doe)
'John Doe'
>>> john_doe.rename("John" ) 'Now my name is John'

Section 38.2: Bound, unbound, and static methods

The idea of bound and unbound methods was removed in Python 3 . In

Python 3 when you declare a method within a class, you are using a def
keyword, thus creating a function object. This is a regular function, and the
surrounding class works as its namespace. In the following example we
declare method f within class A, and it becomes a function A.f:

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

class A(object ):
def f(self , x):

return 2 * x
A.f
# <function A.f at ...> (in Python 3.x)

In Python 2 the behavior was different: function objects within the class were
implicitly replaced with objects of type instancemethod, which were called
unbound methods because they were not bound to any particular class
instance. It was possible to access the underlying function using .__func__
property.

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3 A.f

# <unbound method A.f> (in Python 2.x) A.f.__class__

# <type 'instancemethod'>
A.f.__func__
# <function f at ...>

The latter behaviors are confirmed by inspection - methods are recognized as

functions in Python 3, while the distinction is upheld in Python 2.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0 import inspect

inspect .isfunction(A.f) # True

inspect .ismethod(A.f) # False

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3 import inspect

inspect .isfunction(A.f) # False

inspect .ismethod(A.f) # True

In both versions of Python function/method A.f can be called directly,

provided that you pass an instance of class A as the first argument.

A.f( 1 , 7 )
# Python 2: TypeError: unbound method f() must be called with
# A instance as first argument (got int instance instead) # Python 3: 14
a = A()
A.f(a, 20 )
# Python 2 & 3: 40

Now suppose a is an instance of class A, what is a.f then? Well, intuitively

this should be the same method f of class A, only it should somehow "know"
that it was applied to the object a – in Python this is called method bound to
a.

The nitty-gritty details are as follows: writing a.f invokes the magic
__getattribute__ method of a, which first checks whether a has an attribute
named f (it doesn't), then checks the class A whether it contains a method
with such a name (it does), and creates a new object m of type method which
has the reference to the original A.f in m.__func__, and a reference to the
object a in m.__self__. When this object is called as a function, it simply does
the following: m(...) => m.__func__(m.__self__, ...). Thus this object is
called a bound method because when invoked it knows to supply the object
it was bound to as the first argument. (These things work same way in Python
2 and 3).

a = A()
a.f
# <bound method A.f of <__main__.A object at ...>> a.f(2 )
#4

# Note: the bound method object a.f is recreated *every time* you call it: a.f
is a.f # False
# As a performance optimization you can store the bound method in the
object's # __dict__, in which case the method object will remain fixed:
a.f = a.f
a.f is a.f # True

Finally, Python has class methods and static methods – special kinds of
methods. Class methods work the same way as regular methods, except that
when invoked on an object they bind to the class of the object instead of to
the object. Thus m.__self__ = type (a). When you call such bound method, it
passes the class of a as the first argument. Static methods are even simpler:
they don't bind anything at all, and simply return the underlying function
without any transformations.

class D(object ): multiplier = 2

@ classmethod
def f(cls, x):
return cls.multiplier * x @ staticmethod
def g(name):
print ("Hello, %s" % name)

D.f
# <bound method type.f of <class '__main__.D'>> D.f(12 )
# 24
D.g
# <function D.g at ...>
D.g("world" )
# Hello, world

Note that class methods are bound to the class even when accessed on the
instance:

d = D()
d.multiplier = 1337
(D.multiplier, d.multiplier)
# (2, 1337)
d.f
# <bound method D.f of <class '__main__.D'>> d.f(10 )
# 20

It is worth noting that at the lowest level, functions, methods, staticmethods,

etc. are actually descriptors that invoke __get__ , __set__ and optionally
__del__ special methods. For more details on classmethods and
staticmethods:

What is the difference between @staticmethod and @classmethod in Python?

Meaning of @classmethod and @staticmethod for beginner?

Section 38.3: Basic inheritance

Inheritance in Python is based on similar ideas used in other object oriented
languages like Java, C++ etc. A new class can be derived from an existing
class as follows.
class BaseClass(object ): pass
class DerivedClass(BaseClass): pass

The BaseClass is the already existing (parent ) class, and the DerivedClass is
the new (child ) class that inherits (or subclasses ) attributes from BaseClass.
Note : As of Python 2.2, all classes implicitly inherit from the object class ,
which is the base class for all built-in types.

We define a parent Rectangle class in the example below, which implicitly

inherits from object :

class Rectangle():
def __init__ (self , w, h): self .w = w
self .h = h

def area(self ):
return self .w * self .h
def perimeter(self ):
return 2 * (self .w + self .h)
The Rectangle class can be used as a base class for defining a Square class, as
a square is a special case of rectangle.

class Square(Rectangle):
def __init__ (self , s):
# call parent constructor, w and h are both s super (Square, self ).__init__ (s,
s) self .s = s

The Square class will automatically inherit all attributes of the Rectangle
class as well as the object class. super () is used to call the __init__ () method
of Rectangle class, essentially calling any overridden method of the base
class. Note : in Python 3, super () does not require arguments.

Derived class objects can access and modify the attributes of its base classes:

r.area()
# Output: 12 r.perimeter() # Output: 14

s.area()
# Output: 4
s.perimeter()
# Output: 8

Built-in functions that work with inheritance

issubclass (DerivedClass, BaseClass): returns True if DerivedClass is a
subclass of the BaseClass
isinstance (s, Class): returns True if s is an instance of Class or any of the
derived classes of Class

# subclass check issubclass (Square, Rectangle) # Output: True

# instantiate
r = Rectangle(3 , 4 ) s = Square(2 )

isinstance (r, Rectangle) # Output: True

isinstance (r, Square)

# Output: False
# A rectangle is not a square

isinstance (s, Rectangle) # Output: True

# A square is a rectangle isinstance (s, Square) # Output: True

Section 38.4: Monkey Patching

In this case, "monkey patching" means adding a new variable or method to a
class after it's been defined. For instance, say we defined class A as
class A(object ):
def __init__ (self , num):
self .num = num
def __add__ (self , other):
return A(self .num + other.num)
But now we want to add another function later in the code. Suppose this
function is as follows.
def get_num(self ): return self .num
But how do we add this as a method in A? That's simple we just essentially
place that function into A with an assignment statement.
A.get_num = get_num
Why does this work? Because functions are objects just like any other object,
and methods are functions that belong to the class.
The function get_num shall be available to all existing (already created) as
well to the new instances of A
These additions are available on all instances of that class (or its subclasses)
automatically. For example:
foo = A(42 )
A.get_num = get_num
bar = A(6 );
foo.get_num() # 42
bar.get_num() # 6
Note that, unlike some other languages, this technique does not work for
certain built-in types, and it is not considered good style.

Section 38.5: New-style vs. old-style classes

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.2.0
New-style classes were introduced in Python 2.2 to unify classes and types .
They inherit from the top-level object type. A new-style class is a user-
defined type , and is very similar to built-in types.
# new-style class class New(object ): pass
# new-style instance new = New()

new .__class__
# <class '__main__.New'> type (new )
# <class '__main__.New'> issubclass (New, object ) # True

Old-style classes do not inherit from object . Old-style instances are always
implemented with a built-in instance type.
# old-style class class Old:
pass
# old-style instance old = Old()

old.__class__
# <class __main__.Old at ...> type (old)
# <type 'instance'>
issubclass (Old, object ) # False

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0.0

In Python 3, old-style classes were removed.
New-style classes in Python 3 implicitly inherit from object , so there is no
need to specify MyClass(object ) anymore.
class MyClass: pass
my_inst = MyClass()

type (my_inst)
# <class '__main__.MyClass'> my_inst.__class__
# <class '__main__.MyClass'> issubclass (MyClass, object ) # True

Section 38.6: Class methods: alternate initializers

Class methods present alternate ways to build instances of classes. To
illustrate, let's look at an example.
Let's suppose we have a relatively simple Person class:
class Person(object ):
def __init__ (self , first_name, last_name, age): self .first_name = first_name
self .last_name = last_name
self .age = age
self .full_name = first_name + " " + last_name

def greet(self ):
print ("Hello, my name is " + self .full_name + "." )

It might be handy to have a way to build instances of this class specifying a

full name instead of first and last name separately. One way to do this would
be to have last_name be an optional parameter, and assuming that if it isn't
given, we passed the full name in:

class Person(object ):
def __init__ (self , first_name, age, last_name= None ):
if last_name is None :
self .first_name, self .last_name = first_name.split(" " , 2 )

else :
self .first_name = first_name
self .last_name = last_name

self .full_name = self .first_name + " " + self .last_name self .age = age
def greet(self ):
print ("Hello, my name is " + self .full_name + "." )
However, there are two main problems with this bit of code:

1. The parameters first_name and last_name are now misleading, since you
can enter a full name for first_name. Also, if there are more cases and/or
more parameters that have this kind of flexibility, the if/elif/else branching
can get annoying fast.

2. Not quite as important, but still worth pointing out: what if last_name is
None , but first_name doesn't split into two or more things via spaces? We
have yet another layer of input validation and/or exception handling...

Enter class methods. Rather than having a single initializer, we will create a
separate initializer, called from_full_name, and decorate it with the (built-in)
classmethod decorator.
class Person(object ):

def __init__ (self , first_name, last_name, age): self .first_name = first_name

self .last_name = last_name
self .age = age
self .full_name = first_name + " " + last_name

@ classmethod
def from_full_name(cls, name, age):
if " " not in name:

raise ValueError
first_name, last_name = name.split(" " , 2 ) return cls(first_name, last_name,
age)

def greet(self ):
print ("Hello, my name is " + self .full_name + "." )

Notice cls instead of self as the first argument to from_full_name. Class

methods are applied to the overall class, not an instance of a given class
(which is what self usually denotes). So, if cls is our Person class, then the
returned value from the from_full_name class method is Person(first_name,
last_name, age), which uses Person's __init__ to create an instance of the
Person class. In particular, if we were to make a subclass Employee of
Person, then from_full_name would work in the Employee class as well.

To show that this works as expected, let's create instances of Person in more
than one way without the branching in __init__ :
In [2 ]: bob = Person("Bob" , "Bobberson" , 42 )
In [3 ]: alice = Person.from_full_name("Alice Henderson" , 31 )
In [4 ]: bob.greet()
Hello, my name is Bob Bobberson.
In [5 ]: alice.greet()
Hello, my name is Alice Henderson.
Other references:
Python @classmethod and @staticmethod for beginner?
https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html#classmethod
https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/functions.html#classmethod

Section 38.7: Multiple Inheritance

Python uses the C3 linearization algorithm to determine the order in which to
resolve class attributes, including methods. This is known as the Method
Resolution Order (MRO).
Here's a simple example:
class Foo(object ):
foo = 'attr foo of Foo'

class Bar(object ):
foo = 'attr foo of Bar' # we won't see this. bar = 'attr bar of Bar'

class FooBar(Foo, Bar):

foobar = 'attr foobar of FooBar'
Now if we instantiate FooBar, if we look up the foo attribute, we see that
Foo's attribute is found first
fb = FooBar()
and
>>> fb.foo
'attr foo of Foo'
Here's the MRO of FooBar:
>>> FooBar.mro()
[< class '__main__.FooBar' >, < class '__main__.Foo' >, < class '__main__.Bar'
< type 'object' > ]
It can be simply stated that Python's MRO algorithm is

1. Depth first (e.g. FooBar then Foo) unless

2. a shared parent (object ) is blocked by a child (Bar) and
3. no circular relationships allowed.

That is, for example, Bar cannot inherit from FooBar while FooBar inherits
from Bar.
For a comprehensive example in Python, see the wikipedia entry .
Another powerful feature in inheritance is super . super can fetch parent
classes features.
class Foo(object ):
def foo_method(self ): print "foo Method" class Bar(object ):
def bar_method(self ): print "bar Method" class FooBar(Foo, Bar):
def foo_method(self ):
super (FooBar, self ).foo_method() Multiple inheritance with init method of
class, when every class has own init method then we try for multiple
inheritance then only init method get called of class which is inherit first.
for below example only Foo class init method getting called Bar class init
not getting called
class Foo(object ):
def __init__ (self ): print "foo init" class Bar(object ):
def __init__ (self ): print "bar init"

class FooBar(Foo, Bar):

def __init__ (self ):
print "foobar init"
super (FooBar, self ).__init__ ()

a = FooBar()
Output:
foobar init foo init
But it doesn't mean that Bar class is not inherit. Instance of final FooBar
class is also instance of Bar class and Foo class.
print isinstance (a, FooBar) print isinstance (a, Foo) print isinstance (a, Bar)
Output:

True True True

Section 38.8: Properties

Python classes support properties , which look like regular object variables,
but with the possibility of attaching custom behavior and documentation.
class MyClass(object ):
def __init__ (self ): self ._my_string = ""

@ property
def string (self ):
"""A profoundly important string."""
return self ._my_string

@ string .setter
def string (self , new_value):
assert isinstance (new_value, str ), \
"Give me a string, not a %r!" % type (new_value) self ._my_string =
new_value
@ string .deleter
def x(self ):
self ._my_string = None The object's of class MyClass will appear to have a
property .string , however it's behavior is now tightly controlled:

mc = MyClass()
mc.string = "String!" print (mc.string )
del mc.string

As well as the useful syntax as above, the property syntax allows for
validation, or other augmentations to be added to those attributes. This could
be especially useful with public APIs - where a level of help should be given
to the user.

Another common use of properties is to enable the class to present 'virtual

attributes' - attributes which aren't actually stored but are computed only
when requested.

class Character(object ):
def __init__ (name, max_hp): self ._name = name self ._hp = max_hp self
._max_hp = max_hp

# Make hp read only by not providing a set method @ property

def hp(self ):

return self ._hp

# Make name read only by not providing a set method @ property

def name(self ):
return self .name

def take_damage(self , damage):

self .hp = damage
self .hp = 0 if self .hp < 0 else self .hp

@ property
def is_alive(self ): return self .hp != 0 @ property
def is_wounded(self ):
return self .hp < self .max_hp if self .hp > 0 else False @ property
def is_dead(self ):
return not self .is_alive

bilbo = Character('Bilbo Baggins' , 100 ) bilbo.hp

# out : 100
bilbo.hp = 200
# out : AttributeError: can't set attribute # hp attribute is read only.

bilbo.is_alive # out : True

bilbo.is_wounded # out : False bilbo.is_dead # out : False

bilbo.take_damage( 50 )
bilbo.hp # out : 50

bilbo.is_alive # out : True

bilbo.is_wounded # out : True
bilbo.is_dead # out : False

bilbo.take_damage( 50 ) bilbo.hp
# out : 0

bilbo.is_alive # out : False bilbo.is_wounded # out : False bilbo.is_dead #

out : True

Section 38.9: Default values for instance variables

If the variable contains a value of an immutable type (e.g. a string) then it is
okay to assign a default value like this
class Rectangle(object ):
def __init__ (self , width, height, color= 'blue' ): self .width = width
self .height = height
self .color = color

def area(self ):
return self .width * self .height

# Create some instances of the class default_rectangle = Rectangle(2 , 3 )

print (default_rectangle.color) # blue

red_rectangle = Rectangle(2 , 3 , 'red' ) print (red_rectangle.color) # red

One needs to be careful when initializing mutable objects such as lists in the
constructor. Consider the following example:

class Rectangle2D(object ):
def __init__ (self , width, height, pos= [0 , 0 ], color= 'blue' ): self .width = width
self .height = height
self .pos = pos
self .color = color

r1 = Rectangle2D(5 , 3 )
r2 = Rectangle2D(7 , 8 )
r1.pos[0 ] = 4
r1.pos # [4, 0]
r2.pos # [4, 0] r2's pos has changed as well

This behavior is caused by the fact that in Python default parameters are
bound at function execution and not at function declaration. To get a default
instance variable that's not shared among instances, one should use a
construct like this:

class Rectangle2D(object ):
def __init__ (self , width, height, pos= None , color= 'blue' ): self .width = width
self .height = height
self .pos = pos or [0 , 0 ] # default value is [0, 0] self .color = color

r1 = Rectangle2D(5 , 3 )
r2 = Rectangle2D(7 , 8 )
r1.pos[0 ] = 4
r1.pos # [4, 0]
r2.pos # [0, 0] r2's pos hasn't changed

See also Mutable Default Arguments and “Least Astonishment” and the
Mutable Default Argument .

Section 38.10: Class and instance variables

Instance variables are unique for each instance, while class variables are
shared by all instances.
class C:
x = 2 # class variable
def __init__ (self , y):
self .y = y # instance variable

C.x
#2
C.y
# AttributeError: type object 'C' has no attribute 'y'

c1 = C(3 ) c1.x
#2
c1.y
#3

c2 = C(4 ) c2.x
#2
c2.y
#4

Class variables can be accessed on instances of this class, but assigning to the
class attribute will create an instance variable which shadows the class
variable

c2.x = 4 c2.x
#4
C.x
#2

Note that mutating class variables from instances can lead to some
unexpected consequences.

class D:
x = []
def __init__ (self , item):

self .x.append(item) # note that this is not an assignment!

d1 = D(1 ) d2 = D(2 )

d1.x
# [1, 2] d2.x
# [1, 2] D.x
# [1, 2]

Section 38.11: Class composition

Class composition allows explicit relations between objects. In this example,
people live in cities that belong to countries. Composition allows people to
access the number of all people living in their country:
class Country(object ): def __init__ (self ): self .cities= [] def addCity(self ,
city): self .cities.append(city) class City(object ):

def __init__ (self , numPeople): self .people = []

self .numPeople = numPeople

def addPerson(self , person): self .people.append(person)

def join_country(self , country): self .country = country country.addCity(self )

for i in range (self .numPeople): person(i).join_city(self )

class Person(object ):
def __init__ (self , ID): self .ID= ID

def join_city(self , city): self .city = city

city.addPerson(self )

def people_in_my_country(self ):
x= sum ([len (c.people) for c in self .city.country.cities]) return x

US = Country()
NYC= City(10 ).join_country(US) SF= City(5 ).join_country(US)

print (US.cities[0 ].people[0 ].people_in_my_country()) # 15

Section 38.12: Listing All Class Members

The dir () function can be used to get a list of the members of a class:
dir (Class)
For example:

>>> dir (list )

['__add__' , '__class__' , '__contains__' , '__delattr__' , '__delitem__' , '__dir__'
'__doc__' , '__eq__' , '__format__' , '__ge__' , '__getattribute__' , '__getitem__'
'__gt__' , '__hash__' , '__iadd__' , '__imul__' , '__init__' , '__iter__' , '__le__' ,
'__len__' , '__lt__' , '__mul__' , '__ne__' , '__new__' , '__reduce__' , '__reduce_ex__'
'__repr__' , '__reversed__' , '__rmul__' , '__setattr__' , '__setitem__' , '__sizeof__'
'__str__' , '__subclasshook__' , 'append' , 'clear' , 'copy' , 'count' , 'extend' , 'index'
'insert' , 'pop' , 'remove' , 'reverse' , 'sort' ]

It is common to look only for "non-magic" members. This can be done using
a simple comprehension that lists members with names not starting with __:

>>> [m for m in dir (list ) if not m.startswith('__' )]

['append' , 'clear' , 'copy' , 'count' , 'extend' , 'index' , 'insert' , 'pop' , 'remove' , 'reverse'
'sort' ]

Caveats:

Classes can define a __dir__() method. If that method exists calling dir () will
call __dir__(), otherwise Python will try to create a list of members of the
class. This means that the dir function can have unexpected results. Two
quotes of importance from the official python documentation :
If the object does not provide dir (), the function tries its best to gather
information from the object’s dict attribute, if defined, and from its type
object. The resulting list is not necessarily complete, and may be inaccurate
when the object has a custom getattr ().

Note: Because dir() is supplied primarily as a convenience for use at an

interactive prompt, it tries to supply an interesting set of names more than it
tries to supply a rigorously or consistently defined set of names, and its
detailed behavior may change across releases. For example, metaclass
attributes are not in the result list when the argument is a class.

Section 38.13: Singleton class

A singleton is a pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to one
instance/object. For more info on python singleton design patterns, see here .
class Singleton:
def __new__ (cls): try :

it = cls.__it__
except AttributeError :
it = cls.__it__ = object .__new__ (cls) return it

def __repr__ (self ):

return '<{}>' .format(self .__class__.__name__.upper())
def __eq__ (self , other): return other is self
Another method is to decorate your class. Following the example from this
answer create a Singleton class:

class Singleton:
"""
A non-thread-safe helper class to ease implementing singletons. This should
be used as a decorator -- not a metaclass -- to the class that should be a
singleton.

The decorated class can define one `__init__` function that takes only the
`self` argument. Other than that, there are no restrictions that apply to the
decorated class.
To get the singleton instance, use the `Instance` method. Trying to use
`__call__` will result in a `TypeError` being raised.
Limitations: The decorated class cannot be inherited from.
"""
def __init__ (self , decorated): self ._decorated = decorated

def Instance(self ):
"""
Returns the singleton instance. Upon its first call, it creates a new instance of
the decorated class and calls its `__init__` method. On all subsequent calls,
the already created instance is returned.

"""
try : return self ._instance

except AttributeError :
self ._instance = self ._decorated() return self ._instance

def __call__ (self ):

raise TypeError ('Singletons must be accessed through `Instance()`.' )
def __instancecheck__(self , inst):
return isinstance (inst, self ._decorated)
To use you can use the Instance method
@ Singleton
class Single:
def __init__ (self ):

self .name= None self .val= 0

def getName(self ):

print (self .name)

x = Single.Instance()
y= Single.Instance()
x.name= 'I \' m single'
x.getName() # outputs I'm single y.getName() # outputs I'm single

Section 38.14: Descriptors and Dotted Lookups

Descriptors are objects that are (usually) attributes of classes and that have
any of __get__ , __set__ , or __delete__ special methods.
Data Descriptors have any of __set__ , or __delete__

These can control the dotted lookup on an instance, and are used to
implement functions, staticmethod , classmethod , and property . A dotted
lookup (e.g. instance foo of class Foo looking up attribute bar - i.e. foo.bar)
uses the following algorithm:

1. bar is looked up in the class, Foo. If it is there and it is a Data Descriptor ,

then the data descriptor is used. That's how property is able to control access
to data in an instance, and instances cannot override this. If a Data
Descriptor is not there, then

2. bar is looked up in the instance __dict__ . This is why we can override or

block methods being called from an instance with a dotted lookup. If bar
exists in the instance, it is used. If not, we then

3. look in the class Foo for bar. If it is a Descriptor , then the descriptor
protocol is used. This is how functions (in this context, unbound methods),
classmethod , and staticmethod are implemented. Else it simply returns the
object there, or there is an AttributeError

Chapter 39: Metaclasses

Metaclasses allow you to deeply modify the behaviour of Python classes (in
terms of how they're defined, instantiated, accessed, and more) by replacing
the type metaclass that new classes use by default.

Section 39.1: Basic Metaclasses

When type is called with three arguments it behaves as the (meta)class it is,
and creates a new instance, ie. it produces a new class/type.

Dummy = type ('OtherDummy' , (), dict (x= 1 ))

Dummy.__class__ # <type 'type'>
Dummy().__class__.__class__ # <type 'type'>
It is possible to subclass type to create an custom metaclass.

class mytype(type ):
def __init__ (cls, name, bases, dict ):
# call the base initializer
type .__init__ (cls, name, bases, dict )

# perform custom initialization...

cls.__custom_attribute__ = 2
Now, we have a new custom mytype metaclass which can be used to create
classes in the same manner as type .

MyDummy = mytype('MyDummy' , (), dict (x= 2 ))

MyDummy.__class__ # <class '__main__.mytype'>
MyDummy().__class__.__class__ # <class '__main__.mytype'>
MyDummy.__custom_attribute__ # 2

When we create a new class using the class keyword the metaclass is by
default chosen based on upon the baseclasses.
>>> class Foo(object ): ... pass
>>> type (Foo) type
In the above example the only baseclass is object so our metaclass will be the
type of object , which is type . It is possible override the default, however it
depends on whether we use Python 2 or Python 3:
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
A special class-level attribute __metaclass__ can be used to specify the
metaclass.

class MyDummy(object ):
__metaclass__ = mytype
type (MyDummy) # <class '__main__.mytype'>

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

A special metaclass keyword argument specify the metaclass.
class MyDummy(metaclass= mytype):
pass
type (MyDummy) # <class '__main__.mytype'>
Any keyword arguments (except metaclass) in the class declaration will be
passed to the metaclass. Thus class MyDummy(metaclass= mytype, x= 2 )
will pass x= 2 as a keyword argument to the mytype constructor. Read this in-
depth description of python meta-classes for more details.

Section 39.2: Singletons using metaclasses

A singleton is a pattern that restricts the instantiation of a class to one
instance/object. For more info on python singleton design patterns, see here .
class SingletonType(type ):
def __call__ (cls, *args, **kwargs):
try :

return cls.__instance
except AttributeError :
cls.__instance = super (SingletonType, cls).__call__ (*args, **kwargs)
return cls.__instance

Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7

class MySingleton(object ):
__metaclass__ = SingletonType
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
class MySingleton(metaclass= SingletonType):
pass
MySingleton() is MySingleton() # True, only one instantiation occurs

Section 39.3: Using a metaclass

Metaclass syntax
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
class MyClass(object ):
__metaclass__ = SomeMetaclass
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
class MyClass(metaclass= SomeMetaclass):
pass
Python 2 and 3 compatibility with six
import six
class MyClass(six.with_metaclass(SomeMetaclass)): pass
Section 39.4: Introduction to Metaclasses

What is a metaclass?
In Python, everything is an object: integers, strings, lists, even functions and
classes themselves are objects. And every object is an instance of a class.
To check the class of an object x, one can call type (x), so:

>>> type (5 )
< type 'int' >
>>> type (str )
< type 'type' >
>>> type ([1 , 2 , 3 ]) < type 'list' >

>>> class C(object ): ... pass

...
>>> type (C)
< type 'type' >

Most classes in python are instances of type . type itself is also a class. Such
classes whose instances are also classes are called metaclasses.
The Simplest Metaclass
OK, so there is already one metaclass in Python: type . Can we create another
one?
class SimplestMetaclass(type ): pass
class MyClass(object ):
__metaclass__ = SimplestMetaclass
That does not add any functionality, but it is a new metaclass, see that
MyClass is now an instance of SimplestMetaclass:
>>> type (MyClass)
< class '__main__.SimplestMetaclass' >
A Metaclass which does Something
A metaclass which does something usually overrides type 's __new__ , to
modify some properties of the class to be created, before calling the original
__new__ which creates the class:

class AnotherMetaclass(type ):
def __new__ (cls, name, parents, dct):
# cls is this class
# name is the name of the class to be created
# parents is the list of the class's parent classes
# dct is the list of class's attributes (methods, static variables)

# here all of the attributes can be modified before creating the class, e.g.
dct['x' ] = 8 # now the class will have a static variable x = 8
# return value is the new class. super will take care of that return super
(AnotherMetaclass, cls).__new__ (cls, name, parents, dct)

Section 39.5: Custom functionality with metaclasses

Functionality in metaclasses can be changed so that whenever a class is
built, a string is printed to standard output, or an exception is thrown. This
metaclass will print the name of the class being built.

class VerboseMetaclass(type ): def __new__ (cls, class_name, class_parents,

class_dict):
print ("Creating class " , class_name)
new_class = super ().__new__ (cls, class_name, class_parents, class_dict)
return new_class

You can use the metaclass like so:

class Spam(metaclass= VerboseMetaclass): def eggs(self ):
print ("[insert example string here]" ) s = Spam()
s.eggs()
The standard output will be:
Creating class Spam
[insert example string here]

Section 39.6: The default metaclass

You may have heard that everything in Python is an object. It is true, and all
objects have a class:
>>> type (1 )
int
The literal 1 is an instance of int . Let's declare a class:
>>> class Foo(object ): ... pass
...

Now let's instantiate it:

>>> bar = Foo()
What is the class of bar?
>>> type (bar) Foo
Nice, bar is an instance of Foo. But what is the class of Foo itself?
>>> type (Foo) type
Ok, Foo itself is an instance of type . How about type itself?
>>> type (type ) type
So what is a metaclass? For now let's pretend it is just a fancy name for the
class of a class. Takeaways:

Everything is an object in Python, so everything has a class

The class of a class is called a metaclass
The default metaclass is type , and by far it is the most common metaclass
But why should you know about metaclasses? Well, Python itself is quite
"hackable", and the concept of metaclass is important if you are doing
advanced stuff like meta-programming or if you want to control how your
classes are initialized.

Chapter 40: String Formatting

When storing and transforming data for humans to see, string formatting can
become very important. Python offers a wide variety of string formatting
methods which are outlined in this topic.

Section 40.1: Basics of String Formatting

foo = 1
bar = 'bar'
baz = 3.14

You can use str .format to format output. Bracket pairs are replaced with
arguments in the order in which the arguments are passed:
print ('{}, {} and {}' .format(foo, bar, baz))
# Out: "1, bar and 3.14"
Indexes can also be specified inside the brackets. The numbers correspond to
indexes of the arguments passed to the str .format function (0-based).

print ('{0}, {1}, {2}, and {1}' .format(foo, bar, baz))

# Out: "1, bar, 3.14, and bar"
print ('{0}, {1}, {2}, and {3}' .format(foo, bar, baz))
# Out: index out of range error

Named arguments can be also used:

print ("X value is: {x_val}. Y value is: {y_val}." .format(x_val= 2 , y_val= 3
)) # Out: "X value is: 2. Y value is: 3."
Object attributes can be referenced when passed into str .format:

class AssignValue(object ):
def __init__ (self , value):
self .value = value

my_value = AssignValue(6 )
print ('My value is: {0.value}' .format(my_value)) # "0" is optional # Out:
"My value is: 6"

Dictionary keys can be used as well:

my_dict = {'key' : 6 , 'other_key' : 7 }

print ("My other key is: {0[other_key]}" .format(my_dict)) # "0" is optional
# Out: "My other key is: 7"

Same applies to list and tuple indices:

my_list = ['zero' , 'one' , 'two' ]

print ("2nd element is: {0[2]}" .format(my_list)) # "0" is optional # Out:
"2nd element is: two"

Note: In addition to str .format, Python also provides the modulo operator %-
-also known as the string formatting or interpolation operator (see PEP 3101
)--for formatting strings. str .format is a successor of % and it offers greater
flexibility, for instance by making it easier to carry out multiple substitutions.
In addition to argument indexes, you can also include a format specification
inside the curly brackets. This is an expression that follows special rules and
must be preceded by a colon (:). See the docs for a full description of format
specification. An example of format specification is the alignment directive
:~ ^20 (^ stands for center alignment, total width 20, fill with ~ character):

'{:~^20}' .format('centered' ) # Out: '~~~~~~centered~~~~~~'

format allows behaviour not possible with %, for example repetition of
arguments:

t = (12 , 45 , 22222 , 103 , 6 )

print '{0} {2} {1} {2} {3} {2} {4} {2}' .format(*t) # Out: 12 22222 45
22222 103 22222 6 22222

As format is a function, it can be used as an argument in other functions:

number_list = [12 , 45 , 78 ]
print map ('the number is {}' .format, number_list)
# Out: ['the number is 12', 'the number is 45', 'the number is 78']

from datetime import datetime , timedelta

once_upon_a_time = datetime (2010 , 7 , 1 , 12 , 0 , 0 ) delta = timedelta(days=
hours= 8 , minutes= 20 )
gen = (once_upon_a_time + x * delta for x in xrange (5 ))

print ' \n ' .join(map ('{:%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}' .format, gen)) #Out:

2010-07-01 12:00:00
# 2010-07-14 20:20:00
# 2010-07-28 04:40:00
# 2010-08-10 13:00:00
# 2010-08-23 21:20:00

Section 40.2: Alignment and padding

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.6
The format() method can be used to change the alignment of the string. You
have to do it with a format expression of the form :[fill_char][align_operator]
[width] where align_operator is one of:
< forces the field to be left-aligned within width.
> forces the field to be right-aligned within width.
^ forces the field to be centered within width.
= forces the padding to be placed after the sign (numeric types only).

fill_char (if omitted default is whitespace) is the character used for the
padding.
'{:~<9s}, World' .format('Hello' ) # 'Hello~~~~, World'
'{:~>9s}, World' .format('Hello' ) # '~~~~Hello, World'
'{:~^9s}' .format('Hello' ) # '~~Hello~~'
'{:0=6d}' .format(123 ) # '-00123'
Note: you could achieve the same results using the string functions ljust(),
rjust(), center(), zfill(), however these functions are deprecated since version
2.5.

Section 40.3: Format literals (f-string)

Literal format strings were introduced in PEP 498 (Python3.6 and upwards),
allowing you to prepend f to the beginning of a string literal to effectively
apply .format to it with all variables in the current scope.

>>> foo = 'bar'

>>> f'Foo is {foo}' 'Foo is bar'

This works with more advanced format strings too, including alignment and
dot notation.
>>> f'{foo:^7s}' ' bar '
Note: The f'' does not denote a particular type like b'' for bytes or u'' for
unicode in python2. The formatting is immediately applied, resulting in a
normal string.
The format strings can also be nested :

>>> price = 478.23

>>> f"{f'${price:0.2f}':*>20s}" '*************$478.23'

The expressions in an f-string are evaluated in left-to-right order. This is

detectable only if the expressions have side effects:
>>> def fn(l, incr):
... result = l[0 ]
... l[0 ] += incr
... return result
...
>>> lst = [0 ]
>>> f'{fn(lst,2)} {fn(lst,3)}' '0 2'
>>> f'{fn(lst,2)} {fn(lst,3)}' '5 7'
>>> lst
[10 ]

Section 40.4: Float formatting

>>> '{0:.0f}' .format(42.12345 )
'42'
>>> '{0:.1f}' .format(42.12345 )
'42.1'
>>> '{0:.3f}' .format(42.12345 )
'42.123'
>>> '{0:.5f}' .format(42.12345 ) '42.12345'
>>> '{0:.7f}' .format(42.12345 ) '42.1234500'
Same hold for other way of referencing:
>>> '{:.3f}' .format(42.12345 ) '42.123'
>>> '{answer:.3f}' .format(answer= 42.12345 ) '42.123'
Floating point numbers can also be formatted in scientific notation or as
percentages:
>>> '{0:.3e}' .format(42.12345 ) '4.212e+01'
>>> '{0:.0%}' .format(42.12345 ) '4212%'
You can also combine the {0 } and {name} notations. This is especially
useful when you want to round all variables to a pre-specified number of
decimals with 1 declaration :

>>> s = 'Hello'
>>> a, b, c = 1.12345 , 2.34567 , 34.5678 >>> digits = 2

>>> '{0}! {1:.{n}f}, {2:.{n}f}, {3:.{n}f}' .format(s, a, b, c, n= digits) 'Hello!

1.12, 2.35, 34.57'
Section 40.5: Named placeholders

Format strings may contain named placeholders that are interpolated using
keyword arguments to format.
Using a dictionary (Python 2.x)

>>> data = {'first' : 'Hodor' , 'last' : 'Hodor!' }

>>> '{first} {last}' .format(**data)
'Hodor Hodor!'

Using a dictionary (Python 3.2+)

>>> '{first} {last}' .format_map(data)
'Hodor Hodor!'
str . format_map allows to use dictionaries without having to unpack them
first. Also the class of data (which might be a custom type) is used instead of
a newly filled dict .
Without a dictionary:
>>> '{first} {last}' .format(first= 'Hodor' , last= 'Hodor!' ) 'Hodor Hodor!'

Section 40.6: String formatting with datetime

Any class can configure its own string formatting syntax through the
__format__ method. A type in the standard Python library that makes handy
use of this is the datetime type, where one can use strftime-like formatting
codes directly within str .format:

>>> from datetime import datetime

>>> 'North America: {dt:%m/%d/%Y}. ISO: {dt:%Y-%m-%d}.' .format(dt=
datetime .now()) 'North America: 07/21/2016. ISO: 2016-07-21.'

A full list of list of datetime formatters can be found in the official

documentation .

Section 40.7: Formatting Numerical Values

The .format() method can interpret a number in different formats, such as:
>>> '{:c}' .format(65 ) # Unicode character
'A'
>>> '{:d}' .format(0x0a ) # base 10
'10'
>>> '{:n}' .format(0x0a ) # base 10 using current locale for separators '10'
Format integers to different bases (hex, oct, binary)
>>> '{0:x}' .format(10 ) # base 16, lowercase - Hexadecimal 'a'
>>> '{0:X}' .format(10 ) # base 16, uppercase - Hexadecimal 'A'
>>> '{:o}' .format(10 ) # base 8 - Octal '12'
>>> '{:b}' .format(10 ) # base 2 - Binary '1010'
>>> '{0:#b}, {0:#o}, {0:#x}' .format(42 ) # With prefix '0b101010, 0o52, 0x2a'
>>> '8 bit: {0:08b}; Three bytes: {0:06x}' .format(42 ) # Add zero padding '8
bit: 00101010; Three bytes: 00002a'
Use formatting to convert an RGB float tuple to a color hex string:

>>> r, g, b = (1.0 , 0.4 , 0.0 )

>>> '#{:02X}{:02X}{:02X}' .format(int (255 * r), int (255 * g), int (255 * b))
'#FF6600'

Only integers can be converted:

>>> '{:x}' .format(42.0 )
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
ValueError : Unknown format code 'x' for object of type 'float'

Section 40.8: Nested formatting

Some formats can take additional parameters, such as the width of the
formatted string, or the alignment:
>>> '{:.>10}' .format('foo' )
'.......foo'
Those can also be provided as parameters to format by nesting more {} inside
the {}:

>>> '{:.>{}}' .format('foo' , 10 )

'.......foo'
'{:{}{}{}}' .format('foo' , '*' , '^' , 15 ) '******foo******'
In the latter example, the format string '{:{}{}{}}' is modified to '{:*^15}'
(i.e. "center and pad with * to total length of 15") before applying it to the
actual string 'foo' to be formatted that way.
This can be useful in cases when parameters are not known beforehand, for
instances when aligning tabular data:

>>> data = ["a" , "bbbbbbb" , "ccc" ] >>> m = max (map (len , data))
>>> for d in data:
... print ('{:>{}}' .format(d, m))

a
bbbbbbb
ccc

Section 40.9: Format using Getitem and Getattr

Any data structure that supports __getitem__ can have their nested structure
formatted:

person = {'first' : 'Arthur' , 'last' : 'Dent' }

'{p[first]} {p[last]}' .format(p= person)
# 'Arthur Dent'

Object attributes can be accessed using getattr ():

class Person(object ): first = 'Zaphod' last = 'Beeblebrox'

'{p.first} {p.last}' .format(p= Person()) # 'Zaphod Beeblebrox'

Section 40.10: Padding and truncating strings, combined

Say you want to print variables in a 3 character column.
Note: doubling { and } escapes them.
s = """
pad
{{:3}} :{a:3}:
truncate
{{:.3}} :{e:.3}:
combined
{{:>3.3}} :{a:>3.3}: {{:3.3}} :{a:3.3}: {{:3.3}} :{c:3.3}: {{:3.3}} :{e:3.3}:
"""

print (s.format(a= "1" *1 , c= "3" *3 , e= "5" *5 ))

Output:
pad
{:3 } :1 :
truncate
{:.3 } :555 :

combined
{:> 3.3 } : 1 : {:3.3 } :1 : {:3.3 } :333 : {:3.3 } :555 :

Section 40.11: Custom formatting for a class

Note:
Everything below applies to the str .format method, as well as the format
function. In the text below, the two are interchangeable.

For every value which is passed to the format function, Python looks for a
__format__ method for that argument. Your own custom class can therefore
have their own __format__ method to determine how the format function will
display and format your class and it's attributes.

This is different than the __str__ method, as in the __format__ method you
can take into account the formatting language, including alignment, field
width etc, and even (if you wish) implement your own format specifiers, and
your own formatting language extensions.1

object .__format__(self , format_spec)

For example:
# Example in Python 2 - but can be easily applied to Python 3
class Example(object ):
def __init__ (self , a, b, c):
self .a, self .b, self .c = a, b, c

def __format__(self , format_spec):

""" Implement special semantics for the 's' format specifier """ # Reject
anything that isn't an s
if format_spec[1 ] != 's' :

raise ValueError ('{} format specifier not understood for this object' ,
format_spec[:1 ])

# Output in this example will be (<a>,<b>,<c>)

raw = "(" + "," .join([str (self .a), str (self .b), str (self .c)]) + ")" # Honor the
format language by using the inbuilt string format # Since we know the
original format_spec ends in an 's' # we can take advantage of the str.format
method with a # string argument we constructed above
return "{r:{f}}" .format( r= raw, f= format_spec )

inst = Example(1 , 2 , 3 )
print "{0:>20s}" .format( inst )
# out : (1,2,3)
# Note how the right align and field width of 20 has been honored.

Note:

If your custom class does not have a custom __format__ method and an
instance of the class is passed to the format function, Python2 will always
use the return value of the __str__ method or __repr__ method to determine
what to print (and if neither exist then the default repr will be used), and you
will need to use the s format specifier to format this. With Python3 , to pass
your custom class to the format function, you will need define __format__
method on your custom class.

Chapter 41: String Methods

Section 41.1: Changing the capitalization of a string

Python's string type provides many functions that act on the capitalization of
a string. These include:

str .casefold
str .upper
str .lower
str .capitalize
str .title
str .swapcase

With unicode strings (the default in Python 3), these operations are not 1:1
mappings or reversible. Most of these operations are intended for display
purposes, rather than normalization.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.3 str .casefold()

str .casefold creates a lowercase string that is suitable for case insensitive
comparisons. This is more aggressive than str .lower and may modify strings
that are already in lowercase or cause strings to grow in length, and is not
intended for display purposes.

"XßΣ" .casefold() # 'xss σ '

"XßΣ" .lower() # 'x ßς '
The transformations that take place under casefolding are defined by the
Unicode Consortium in the CaseFolding.txt file on their website.
str .upper()
str .upper takes every character in a string and converts it to its uppercase
equivalent, for example:
"This is a 'string'." .upper() # "THIS IS A 'STRING'."
str .lower()
str .lower does the opposite; it takes every character in a string and converts it
to its lowercase equivalent:
"This IS a 'string'." .lower() # "this is a 'string'."
str .capitalize()
str .capitalize returns a capitalized version of the string, that is, it makes the
first character have upper case and the rest lower:
"this Is A 'String'." .capitalize() # Capitalizes the first character and
lowercases all others # "This is a 'string'."
str .title()
str .title returns the title cased version of the string, that is, every letter in the
beginning of a word is made upper case and all others are made lower case:
"this Is a 'String'" .title() # "This Is A 'String'"
str .swapcase()
str .swapcase returns a new string object in which all lower case characters
are swapped to upper case and all upper case characters to lower:
"this iS A STRiNG" .swapcase() #Swaps case of each character # "THIS Is a
strIng"
Usage as str class methods
It is worth noting that these methods may be called either on string objects
(as shown above) or as a class method of the str class (with an explicit call to
str .upper, etc.)
str .upper("This is a 'string'" ) # "THIS IS A 'STRING'"
This is most useful when applying one of these methods to many strings at
once in say, a map function.
map (str .upper, ["These" , "are" , "some" , "'strings'" ]) # ['THESE', 'ARE',
'SOME', "'STRINGS'"]

Section 41.2: str.translate: Translating characters in a string

Python supports a translate method on the str type which allows you to
specify the translation table (used for replacements) as well as any characters
which should be deleted in the process.
str.translate(table[, deletechars])

Parameter Description
table It is a lookup table that defines the mapping from one character to
another.
deletecharsA list of characters which are to be removed from the string.

The maketrans method (str .maketrans in Python 3 and string .maketrans in

Python 2) allows you to generate a translation table.

>>> translation_table = str .maketrans("aeiou" , "12345" ) >>> my_string =

"This is a string!"
>>> translated = my_string.translate(translation_table) 'Th3s 3s 1 str3ng!'

The translate method returns a string which is a translated copy of the

original string.
You can set the table argument to None if you only need to delete characters.
>>> 'this syntax is very useful' .translate(None , 'aeiou' ) 'ths syntx s vry sfl'

Section 41.3: str.format and f-strings: Format values into a

string
Python provides string interpolation and formatting functionality through the
str .format function, introduced in version 2.6 and f-strings introduced in
version 3.6.
Given the following variables:

i = 10
f = 1.5
s = "foo"
l = ['a' , 1 , 2 ]
d = {'a' : 1 , 2 : 'foo' }

The following statements are all equivalent

"10 1.5 foo ['a', 1, 2] {'a': 1, 2: 'foo'}"
>>> "{} {} {} {} {}" .format(i, f, s, l, d)
>>> str .format("{} {} {} {} {}" , i, f, s, l, d)
>>> "{0} {1} {2} {3} {4}" .format(i, f, s, l, d)
>>> "{0:d} {1:0.1f} {2} {3!r} {4!r}" .format(i, f, s, l, d)
>>> "{i:d} {f:0.1f} {s} {l!r} {d!r}" .format(i= i, f= f, s= s, l= l, d= d)
>>> f"{i} {f} {s} {l} {d}"
>>> f"{i:d} {f:0.1f} {s} {l!r} {d!r}"

For reference, Python also supports C-style qualifiers for string formatting.
The examples below are equivalent to those above, but the str .format
versions are preferred due to benefits in flexibility, consistency of notation,
and extensibility:

"%d %0.1f %s %r %r" % (i, f, s, l, d)

"%(i)d %(f)0.1f %(s)s %(l)r %(d)r" % dict (i= i, f= f, s= s, l= l, d= d)
The braces uses for interpolation in str .format can also be numbered to
reduce duplication when formatting strings. For example, the following are
equivalent:
"I am from Australia. I love cupcakes from Australia!"
>>> "I am from {}. I love cupcakes from {}!" .format("Australia" , "Australia"
)
>>> "I am from {0}. I love cupcakes from {0}!" .format("Australia" )
While the official python documentation is, as usual, thorough enough,
pyformat.info has a great set of examples with detailed explanations.
Additionally, the { and } characters can be escaped by using double brackets:
"{'a': 5, 'b': 6}" >>> "{{'{}': {}, '{}': {}}}" .format("a" , 5 , "b" , 6 )
>>> f"{{'{'a'}': {5}, '{'b'}': {6}}" See String Formatting for additional
information. str .format() was proposed in PEP 3101 and f-strings in PEP 498
.

Section 41.4: String module's useful constants

Python's string module provides constants for string related operations. To
use them, import the string module:
>>> import string
string .ascii_letters:
Concatenation of ascii_lowercase and ascii_uppercase:
>>> string .ascii_letters
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
string .ascii_lowercase:
Contains all lower case ASCII characters:
>>> string .ascii_lowercase 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
string .ascii_uppercase:
Contains all upper case ASCII characters:
>>> string .ascii_uppercase 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
string .digits:
Contains all decimal digit characters:
>>> string .digits '0123456789'
string .hexdigits:
Contains all hex digit characters:
>>> string .hexdigits '0123456789abcdefABCDEF'
string .octaldigits:
Contains all octal digit characters:
>>> string .octaldigits '01234567'
string .punctuation:
Contains all characters which are considered punctuation in the C locale:
>>> string .punctuation
'!"#$%& \' ()*+,-./:;<=>?@[ \\ ]^_`{|}~'
string .whitespace:
Contains all ASCII characters considered whitespace:
>>> string .whitespace ' \t\n\r\x 0b \x 0c'
In script mode, print (string .whitespace) will print the actual characters, use
str to get the string returned above.
string .printable:
Contains all characters which are considered printable; a combination of
string .digits, string .ascii_letters, string .punctuation, and string .whitespace.

>>> string .printable

'0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!"#$
\' ()*+,-./:;<=>?@[ \\ ]^_`{|}~ \t\n\r\x 0b \x 0c'

Section 41.5: Stripping unwanted leading/trailing characters

from a string

Three methods are provided that offer the ability to strip leading and trailing
characters from a string: str .strip, str .rstrip and str .lstrip. All three methods
have the same signature and all three return a new string object with
unwanted characters removed.

str .strip([chars])
str .strip acts on a given string and removes (strips) any leading or trailing
characters contained in the argument chars; if chars is not supplied or is None
, all white space characters are removed by default. For example:
>>> " a line with leading and trailing space " .strip() 'a line with leading and
trailing space'
If chars is supplied, all characters contained in it are removed from the string,
which is returned. For example:
>>> ">>> a Python prompt" .strip('> ' ) # strips '>' character and space
character 'a Python prompt'
str .rstrip([chars]) and str .lstrip([chars])

These methods have similar semantics and arguments with str .strip(), their
difference lies in the direction from which they start. str .rstrip() starts from
the end of the string while str .lstrip() splits from the start of the string.
For example, using str .rstrip:

>>> " spacious string " .rstrip() ' spacious string'

While, using str .lstrip:
>>> " spacious string " .rstrip() 'spacious string '

Section 41.6: Reversing a string

A string can reversed using the built-in reversed () function, which takes a
string and returns an iterator in reverse order.

>>> reversed ('hello' )

< reversed object at 0x0000000000000000 >
>>> [char for char in reversed ('hello' )]
['o' , 'l' , 'l' , 'e' , 'h' ]

reversed () can be wrapped in a call to '' .join() to make a string from the
iterator.
>>> '' .join(reversed ('hello' )) 'olleh'
While using reversed () might be more readable to uninitiated Python users,
using extended slicing with a step of
-1 is faster and more concise. Here , try to implement it as function:

>>> def reversed_string(main_string): ... return main_string[::1 ] ...

>>> reversed_string('hello' )
'olleh'

Section 41.7: Split a string based on a delimiter into a list of

strings
str .split(sep = None , maxsplit = - 1 )
str .split takes a string and returns a list of substrings of the original string.
The behavior differs depending on whether the sep argument is provided or
omitted.

If sep isn't provided, or is None , then the splitting takes place wherever there
is whitespace. However, leading and trailing whitespace is ignored, and
multiple consecutive whitespace characters are treated the same as a single
whitespace character:

>>> "This is a sentence." .split() ['This' , 'is' , 'a' , 'sentence.' ]

>>> " This is a sentence. " .split() ['This' , 'is' , 'a' , 'sentence.' ]
>>> " " .split() []

The sep parameter can be used to define a delimiter string. The original string
is split where the delimiter string occurs, and the delimiter itself is discarded.
Multiple consecutive delimiters are not treated the same as a single
occurrence, but rather cause empty strings to be created.

>>> "This is a sentence." .split(' ' ) ['This' , 'is' , 'a' , 'sentence.' ]

>>> "Earth,Stars,Sun,Moon" .split(',' ) ['Earth' , 'Stars' , 'Sun' , 'Moon' ]
>>> " This is a sentence. " .split(' ' )
['' , 'This' , 'is' , '' , '' , '' , 'a' , 'sentence.' , '' , '' ]
>>> "This is a sentence." .split('e' ) ['This is a s' , 'nt' , 'nc' , '.' ]
>>> "This is a sentence." .split('en' ) ['This is a s' , 't' , 'ce.' ]
The default is to split on every occurrence of the delimiter, however the
maxsplit parameter limits the number of splittings that occur. The default
value of -1 means no limit:
>>> "This is a sentence." .split('e' , maxsplit= 0 ) ['This is a sentence.' ]
>>> "This is a sentence." .split('e' , maxsplit= 1 ) ['This is a s' , 'ntence.' ]
>>> "This is a sentence." .split('e' , maxsplit= 2 ) ['This is a s' , 'nt' , 'nce.' ]
>>> "This is a sentence." .split('e' , maxsplit= -1 ) ['This is a s' , 'nt' , 'nc' , '.' ]
str .rsplit(sep = None , maxsplit = - 1 )
str .rsplit ("right split") differs from str .split ("left split") when maxsplit is
specified. The splitting starts at the end of the string rather than at the
beginning:
>>> "This is a sentence." .rsplit('e' , maxsplit= 1 ) ['This is a sentenc' , '.' ]
>>> "This is a sentence." .rsplit('e' , maxsplit= 2 ) ['This is a sent' , 'nc' , '.' ]
Note : Python specifies the maximum number of splits performed, while
most other programming languages specify the maximum number of
substrings created. This may create confusion when porting or comparing
code.
Section 41.8: Replace all occurrences of one substring with
another substring

Python's str type also has a method for replacing occurrences of one sub-
string with another sub-string in a given string. For more demanding cases,
one can use re .sub.
str .replace(old , new [ , count]):
str .replace takes two arguments old and new containing the old sub-string
which is to be replaced by the new substring. The optional argument count
specifies the number of replacements to be made:
For example, in order to replace 'foo' with 'spam' in the following string, we
can call str .replace with old = 'foo' and new = 'spam' :
>>> "Make sure to foo your sentence." .replace('foo' , 'spam' ) "Make sure to
spam your sentence."
If the given string contains multiple examples that match the old argument,
all occurrences are replaced with the value supplied in new :
>>> "It can foo multiple examples of foo if you want." .replace('foo' , 'spam' )
"It can spam multiple examples of spam if you want."
unless, of course, we supply a value for count. In this case count occurrences
are going to get replaced:

>>> """It can foo multiple examples of foo if you want, \

... or you can limit the foo with the third argument.""" .replace('foo' , 'spam' , 1
'It can spam multiple examples of foo if you want, or you can limit the foo
with the third argument.'

Section 41.9: Testing what a string is composed of

Python's str type also features a number of methods that can be used to
evaluate the contents of a string. These are str .isalpha, str .isdigit, str
.isalnum, str .isspace. Capitalization can be tested with str .isupper, str
.islower and str .istitle.

str .isalpha
str .isalpha takes no arguments and returns True if the all characters in a
given string are alphabetic, for example:
>>> "Hello World" .isalpha() # contains a space False
>>> "Hello2World" .isalpha() # contains a number False
>>> "HelloWorld!" .isalpha() # contains punctuation False
>>> "HelloWorld" .isalpha()
True

As an edge case, the empty string evaluates to False when used with ""
.isalpha().
str .isupper, str .islower, str .istitle
These methods test the capitalization in a given string.
str .isupper is a method that returns True if all characters in a given string are
uppercase and False otherwise.

>>> "HeLLO WORLD" .isupper() False

>>> "HELLO WORLD" .isupper() True
>>> "" .isupper()

False
Conversely, str .islower is a method that returns True if all characters in a
given string are lowercase and False otherwise.

>>> "Hello world" .islower() False

>>> "hello world" .islower() True
>>> "" .islower()
False

str .istitle returns True if the given string is title cased; that is, every word
begins with an uppercase character followed by lowercase characters.

>>> "hello world" .istitle() False

>>> "Hello world" .istitle() False
>>> "Hello World" .istitle() True
>>> "" .istitle()
False

str .isdecimal, str .isdigit, str .isnumeric

str .isdecimal returns whether the string is a sequence of decimal digits,
suitable for representing a decimal number.
str .isdigit includes digits not in a form suitable for representing a decimal
number, such as superscript digits.
str .isnumeric includes any number values, even if not digits, such as values
outside the range 0-9.
isdecimal isdigit isnumeric

12345 True True True ?2 ??5 True True True ?²³????? False True True ??
False False True Five False False False

Bytestrings (bytes in Python 3, str in Python 2), only support isdigit, which
only checks for basic ASCII digits.
As with str .isalpha, the empty string evaluates to False .
str .isalnum
This is a combination of str .isalpha and str .isnumeric, specifically it
evaluates to True if all characters in the given string are alphanumeric , that
is, they consist of alphabetic or numeric characters:

>>> "Hello2World" .isalnum() True

>>> "HelloWorld" .isalnum() True
>>> "2016" .isalnum()
True

>>> "Hello World" .isalnum() # contains whitespace False

str .isspace
Evaluates to True if the string contains only whitespace characters.

>>> " \t\r\n " .isspace() True

>>> " " .isspace()
True

Sometimes a string looks “empty” but we don't know whether it's because it
contains just whitespace or no character at all
>>> "" .isspace() False
To cover this case we need an additional test

>>> my_str = ''

>>> my_str.isspace()
False
>>> my_str.isspace() or not my_str True

But the shortest way to test if a string is empty or just contains whitespace
characters is to use strip(with no arguments it removes all leading and trailing
whitespace characters)
>>> not my_str.strip() True

Section 41.10: String Contains

Python makes it extremely intuitive to check if a string contains a given
substring. Just use the in operator:
>>> "foo" in "foo.baz.bar"
True
Note: testing an empty string will always result in True :
>>> "" in "test" True

Section 41.11: Join a list of strings into one string

A string can be used as a separator to join a list of strings together into a
single string using the join() method. For example you can create a string
where each element in a list is separated by a space.
>>> " " .join(["once" , "upon" , "a" , "time" ])
"once upon a time"
The following example separates the string elements with three hyphens.
>>> "---" .join(["once" , "upon" , "a" , "time" ]) "once---upon---a---time"

Section 41.12: Counting number of times a substring appears

in a string
One method is available for counting the number of occurrences of a sub-
string in another string, str .count.
str .count(sub[ , start[ , end]])

str .count returns an int indicating the number of non-overlapping

occurrences of the sub-string sub in another string. The optional arguments
start and end indicate the beginning and the end in which the search will take
place. By default start = 0 and end = len (str ) meaning the whole string will be
searched:

>>> s = "She sells seashells by the seashore." >>> s.count("sh" )

2
>>> s.count("se" )
3
>>> s.count("sea" )
2
>>> s.count("seashells" )
1

By specifying a different value for start, end we can get a more localized
search and count, for example, if start is equal to 13 the call to:
>>> s.count("sea" , start) 1
is equivalent to:

>>> t = s[start:] >>> t.count("sea" ) 1

Section 41.13: Case insensitive string comparisons

Comparing string in a case insensitive way seems like something that's

trivial, but it's not. This section only considers unicode strings (the default in
Python 3). Note that Python 2 may have subtle weaknesses relative to Python
3 - the later's unicode handling is much more complete.

The first thing to note it that case-removing conversions in unicode aren't

trivial. There is text for which text.lower() != text.upper().lower(), such as "ß"
:
>>> "ß" .lower() 'ß'
>>> "ß" .upper().lower() 'ss'
But let's say you wanted to caselessly compare "BUSSE" and "Buße" . You
probably also want to compare "BUSSE" and "BU E" equal - that's the newer
capital form. The recommended way is to use casefold:
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.3

>>> help (str .casefold) """

Help on method_descriptor:
casefold(...)
S.casefold() -> str
Return a version of S suitable for caseless comparisons. """
Do not just use lower. If casefold is not available, doing .upper().lower()
helps (but only somewhat).
Then you should consider accents. If your font renderer is good, you
probably think "ê" == "e" - but it doesn't:
>>> "ê" == "e" False
This is because they are actually
>>> import unicodedata
>>> [unicodedata .name(char) for char in "ê" ] ['LATIN SMALL LETTER E
WITH CIRCUMFLEX' ]
>>> [unicodedata .name(char) for char in "e" ]
['LATIN SMALL LETTER E' , 'COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT' ]
The simplest way to deal with this is unicodedata .normalize. You probably
want to use NFKD normalization, but feel free to check the documentation.
Then one does
>>> unicodedata .normalize("NFKD" , "ê" ) == unicodedata
.normalize("NFKD" , "e" ) True
To finish up, here this is expressed in functions:
import unicodedata
def normalize_caseless(text):
return unicodedata .normalize("NFKD" , text.casefold())
def caseless_equal(left, right):
return normalize_caseless(left) == normalize_caseless(right)

Section 41.14: Justify strings

Python provides functions for justifying strings, enabling text padding to
make aligning various strings much easier.
Below is an example of str .ljust and str .rjust:

interstates_lengths = {
5 : (1381 , 2222 ),
19 : (63 , 102 ),
40 : (2555 , 4112 ),
93 : (189 , 305 ),
}
for road, length in interstates_lengths.items():
miles, kms = length
print ('{} -> {} mi. ({} km.)' .format(str (road).rjust(4 ), str (miles).ljust(4 ),
str (kms).ljust(4 )))

40 > 2555 mi. (4112 km.) 19 > 63 mi. (102 km.) 5 > 1381 mi. (2222 km.) 93 >
189 mi. (305 km.)

ljust and rjust are very similar. Both have a width parameter and an optional
fillchar parameter. Any string created by these functions is at least as long as
the width parameter that was passed into the function. If the string is longer
than width alread, it is not truncated. The fillchar argument, which defaults to
the space character ' ' must be a single character, not a multicharacter string.

The ljust function pads the end of the string it is called on with the fillchar
until it is width characters long. The rjust function pads the beginning of the
string in a similar fashion. Therefore, the l and r in the names of these
functions refer to the side that the original string, not the fillchar , is
positioned in the output string.

Section 41.15: Test the starting and ending characters of a

string
In order to test the beginning and ending of a given string in Python, one can
use the methods str .startswith() and str .endswith().
str .startswith(prefix[ , start[ , end]])
As its name implies, str .startswith is used to test whether a given string starts
with the given characters in prefix.

>>> s = "This is a test string" >>> s.startswith("T" )

True
>>> s.startswith("Thi" )
True
>>> s.startswith("thi" )
False
The optional arguments start and end specify the start and end points from
which the testing will start and finish. In the following example, by
specifying a start value of 2 our string will be searched from position 2 and
afterwards:
>>> s.startswith("is" , 2 ) True
This yields True since s[2 ] == 'i' and s[3 ] == 's' .
You can also use a tuple to check if it starts with any of a set of strings

>>> s.startswith(('This' , 'That' )) True

>>> s.startswith(('ab' , 'bc' )) False

str .endswith(prefix[ , start[ , end]])

str .endswith is exactly similar to str .startswith with the only difference being
that it searches for ending characters and not starting characters. For example,
to test if a string ends in a full stop, one could write:

>>> s = "this ends in a full stop." >>> s.endswith('.' )

True
>>> s.endswith('!' )
False

as with startswith more than one characters can used as the ending sequence:

>>> s.endswith('stop.' ) True

>>> s.endswith('Stop.' ) False

You can also use a tuple to check if it ends with any of a set of strings

>>> s.endswith(('.' , 'something' )) True

>>> s.endswith(('ab' , 'bc' )) False

Section 41.16: Conversion between str or bytes data and

unicode characters
The contents of files and network messages may represent encoded
characters. They often need to be converted to unicode for proper display.
In Python 2, you may need to convert str data to Unicode characters. The
default ('', "" , etc.) is an ASCII string, with any values outside of ASCII
range displayed as escaped values. Unicode strings are u'' (or u"" , etc.).
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
# You get " © abc" encoded in UTF-8 from a file, network, or other data
source

s = ' \x c2 \x a9 abc' # s is a byte array, not a string of characters

# Doesn't know the original was UTF-8
# Default form of string literals in Python 2

s[0 ] # '\xc2' - meaningless byte (without context such as an encoding) type (s)
# str - even though it's not a useful one w/o having a known encoding

u = s.decode('utf-8' ) # u'\xa9 abc'

# Now we have a Unicode string, which can be read as UTF-8 and printed
properly
# In Python 2, Unicode string literals need a leading u
# str.decode converts a string which may contain escaped bytes to a Unicode
string
u[0 ]
type (u)

# u'\xa9' - Unicode Character 'COPYRIGHT SIGN' (U+00A9) ' © '

# unicode
u.encode('utf-8' ) # '\xc2\xa9 abc'
# unicode.encode produces a string with escaped bytes for non-ASCII
characters

In Python 3 you may need to convert arrays of bytes (referred to as a 'byte

literal') to strings of Unicode characters. The default is now a Unicode string,
and bytestring literals must now be entered as b'' , b"" , etc. A byte literal will
return True to isinstance (some_val, byte), assuming some_val to be a string
that might be encoded as bytes.

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

# You get from file or network " © abc" encoded in UTF-8 s = b' \x c2 \x a9 abc'
s is a byte array, not characters

# In Python 3, the default string literal is Unicode; byte array literals need a
leading b
s[0 ] # b'\xc2' - meaningless byte (without context such as an encoding) type
(s) # bytes - now that byte arrays are explicit, Python can show that.

u = s.decode('utf-8' ) # ' © abc' on a Unicode terminal

# bytes.decode converts a byte array to a string (which will, in Python 3, be
Unicode)
u[0 ]
type (u)

# '\u00a9' - Unicode Character 'COPYRIGHT SIGN' (U+00A9) ' © ' # str

# The default string literal in Python 3 is UTF-8 Unicode

u.encode('utf-8' ) # b'\xc2\xa9 abc'

# str.encode produces a byte array, showing ASCII-range bytes as unescaped
characters.

Chapter 42: Using loops within functions

In Python function will be returned as soon as execution hits "return"
statement.

Section 42.1: Return statement inside loop in a function

In this example, function will return as soon as value var has 1
def func(params):
for value in params:
print ('Got value {}' .format(value))

if value == 1 :
# Returns from function as soon as value is 1
print (">>>> Got 1" )
return

print ("Still looping" )

return "Couldn't find 1"
func([5 , 3 , 1 , 2 , 8 , 9 ])
output

Got value 5
Still looping Got value 3
Still looping Got value 1
>>>> Got 1

Chapter 43: Importing modules

Section 43.1: Importing a module

Use the import statement:

>>> import random

>>> print (random .randint(1 , 10 ))
4

import module will import a module and then allow you to reference its
objects -- values, functions and classes, for example -- using the
module.name syntax. In the above example, the random module is imported,
which contains the randint function. So by importing random you can call
randint with random .randint.

You can import a module and assign it to a different name:

>>> import random as rn >>> print (rn.randint(1 , 10 )) 4

If your python file main.py is in the same folder as custom.py. You can
import it like this:
import custom
It is also possible to import a function from a module:

>>> from math import sin >>> sin(1 )

0.8414709848078965

To import specific functions deeper down into a module, the dot operator
may be used only on the left side of the import keyword:
from urllib .request import urlopen

In python, we have two ways to call function from top level. One is import
and another is from . We should use import when we have a possibility of
name collision. Suppose we have hello.py file and world.py files having same
function named function. Then import statement will work good.

from hello import function from world import function

function() #world's function will be invoked. Not hello's
In general import will provide you a namespace.
import hello import world
hello.function() # exclusively hello's function will be invoked world.function()
# exclusively world's function will be invoked
But if you are sure enough, in your whole project there is no way having
same function name you should use from statement
Multiple imports can be made on the same line:

>>> # Multiple modules

>>> import time , sockets, random >>> # Multiple functions
>>> from math import sin, cos, tan >>> # Multiple constants
>>> from math import pi, e

>>> print (pi)

3.141592653589793
>>> print (cos(45 )) 0.5253219888177297 >>> print (time .time ())
1482807222.7240417

The keywords and syntax shown above can also be used in combinations:

>>> from urllib .request import urlopen as geturl, pathname2url as path2url,

getproxies >>> from math import factorial as fact, gamma, atan as arctan
>>> import random .randint, time , sys

>>> print (time .time ())

1482807222.7240417
>>> print (arctan(60 ))
1.554131203080956
>>> filepath = "/dogs/jumping poodle (december).png" >>> print
(path2url(filepath))
/dogs/jumping%20poodle%20 %28december%29 .png

Section 43.2: The __all__ special variable

Modules can have a special variable named __all__ to restrict what variables
are imported when using from mymodule import *.
Given the following module:
# mymodule.py
__all__ = ['imported_by_star' ]
imported_by_star = 42 not_imported_by_star = 21
Only imported_by_star is imported when using from mymodule import *:

>>> from mymodule import *

>>> imported_by_star
42
>>> not_imported_by_star
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

NameError : name 'not_imported_by_star' is not defined
However, not_imported_by_star can be imported explicitly:
>>> from mymodule import not_imported_by_star >>>
not_imported_by_star
21

Section 43.3: Import modules from an arbitrary filesystem

location

If you want to import a module that doesn't already exist as a built-in module
in the Python Standard Library nor as a side-package, you can do this by
adding the path to the directory where your module is found to sys . path. This
may be useful where multiple python environments exist on a host.

import sys
sys .path.append("/path/to/directory/containing/your/module" ) import
mymodule
It is important that you append the path to the directory in which mymodule
is found, not the path to the module itself.

Section 43.4: Importing all names from a module

from module_name import *
for example:

from math import *

sqrt(2 ) # instead of math.sqrt(2)
ceil(2.7 ) # instead of math.ceil(2.7)

This will import all names defined in the math module into the global
namespace, other than names that begin with an underscore (which indicates
that the writer feels that it is for internal use only).
Warning : If a function with the same name was already defined or
imported, it will be overwritten . Almost always importing only specific
names from math import sqrt, ceil is the recommended way :
def sqrt(num):
print ("I don't know what's the square root of {}." .format(num))
sqrt(4 )
# Output: I don't know what's the square root of 4.

from math import * sqrt(4 )

# Output: 2.0

Starred imports are only allowed at the module level. Attempts to perform
them in class or function definitions result in a SyntaxError .
def f():
from math import *
and
class A:
from math import *
both fail with: SyntaxError : import * only allowed at module level

Section 43.5: Programmatic importing

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.7
To import a module through a function call, use the importlib module
(included in Python starting in version 2.7):
import importlib
random = importlib.import_module("random" )
The importlib.import_module() function will also import the submodule of a
package directly:
collections_abc = importlib.import_module("collections.abc" )
For older versions of Python, use the imp module.
Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7
Use the functions imp .find_module and imp .load_module to perform a
programmatic import.
Taken from standard library documentation

import imp , sys

def import_module(name):
fp, pathname, description = imp .find_module(name)
try :
return imp .load_module(name, fp, pathname, description)
finally :
if fp:
fp.close()

Do NOT use __import__ () to programmatically import modules! There are

subtle details involving sys .modules, the fromlist argument, etc. that are easy
to overlook which importlib.import_module() handles for you.

Section 43.6: PEP8 rules for Imports

Some recommended PEP8 style guidelines for imports:
1. Imports should be on separate lines:

from math import sqrt, ceil # Not recommended from math import sqrt #
Recommended from math import ceil

2. Order imports as follows at the top of the module:

Standard library imports

Related third party imports
Local application/library specific imports

3. Wildcard imports should be avoided as it leads to confusion in names in

the current namespace. If you do from module import *, it can be unclear if
a specific name in your code comes from module or not. This is doubly true
if you have multiple from module import *-type statements. 4. Avoid using
relative imports; use explicit imports instead.

Section 43.7: Importing specific names from a module

Instead of importing the complete module you can import only specified
names:
from random import randint # Syntax "from MODULENAME import
NAME1[, NAME2[, ...]]" print (randint(1 , 10 )) # Out: 5
from random is needed, because the python interpreter has to know from
which resource it should import a function or class and import randint
specifies the function or class itself.
Another example below (similar to the one above):
from math import pi
print (pi) # Out: 3.14159265359
The following example will raise an error, because we haven't imported a
module:
random .randrange(1 , 10 ) # works only if "import random" has been run
before
Outputs:
NameError: name 'random' is not defined
The python interpreter does not understand what you mean with random . It
needs to be declared by adding import random to the example:
import random
random .randrange(1 , 10 )

Section 43.8: Importing submodules

from module.submodule import function
This imports function from module.submodule.
Section 43.9: Re-importing a module

When using the interactive interpreter, you might want to reload a module.
This can be useful if you're editing a module and want to import the newest
version, or if you've monkey-patched an element of an existing module and
want to revert your changes.

Note that you can't just import the module again to revert:

import math
math .pi = 3
print (math .pi) # 3
import math
print (math .pi) # 3

This is because the interpreter registers every module you import. And when
you try to reimport a module, the interpreter sees it in the register and does
nothing. So the hard way to reimport is to use import after removing the
corresponding item from the register:

print (math .pi) # 3

import sys
if 'math' in sys .modules: # Is the ``math`` module in the register?

del sys .modules['math' ] # If so, remove it.

import math
print (math .pi) # 3.141592653589793

But there is more a straightforward and simple way.

Python 2
Use the reload function:
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3

import math
math .pi = 3
print (math .pi) # 3
reload (math )
print (math .pi) # 3.141592653589793
Python 3
The reload function has moved to importlib:
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0

import math
math .pi = 3
print (math .pi) # 3
from importlib import reload
reload (math )
print (math .pi) # 3.141592653589793

Section 43.10: __import__() function

The __import__ () function can be used to import modules where the name is
only known at runtime
if user_input == "os" :
os = __import__ ("os" )
# equivalent to import os
This function can also be used to specify the file path to a module
mod = __import__ (r"C:/path/to/file/anywhere/on/computer/module.py" )

Chapter 44: Di☐erence between Module and

Package
Section 44.1: Modules

A module is a single Python file that can be imported. Using a module looks
like this:
module.py
def hi():
print ("Hello world!" )
my_script.py
import module
module.hi()
in an interpreter
>>> from module import hi
>>> hi()
# Hello world!

Section 44.2: Packages

A package is made up of multiple Python files (or modules), and can even
include libraries written in C or C++. Instead of being a single file, it is an
entire folder structure which might look like this:
Folder package

__init__ .py
dog.py
hi.py

__init__ .py
from package.dog import woof
from package.hi import hi
dog.py
def woof():
print ("WOOF!!!" )
hi.py
def hi():
print ("Hello world!" )

All Python packages must contain an __init__ .py file. When you import a
package in your script (import package), the __init__ .py script will be run,
giving you access to the all of the functions in the package. In this case, it
allows you to use the package.hi and package.woof functions.

Chapter 45: Math Module

Section 45.1: Rounding: round, floor, ceil, trunc

In addition to the built-in round function, the math module provides the floor,
ceil, and trunc functions.
x = 1.55
y = 1.55

# round to the nearest integer

round (x) # 2
round (y) # -2

# the second argument gives how many decimal places to round to (defaults
to 0) round (x, 1 ) # 1.6
round (y, 1 ) # -1.6

# math is a module so import it first, then use it.

import math

# get the largest integer less than x

math .floor(x) # 1
math .floor(y) # -2

# get the smallest integer greater than x

math .ceil(x) # 2
math .ceil(y) # -1

# drop fractional part of x

math .trunc(x) # 1, equivalent to math.floor for positive numbers
math .trunc(y) # -1, equivalent to math.ceil for negative numbers

Python 2.xVersion ≤ 2.7

floor, ceil, trunc, and round always return a float .
round (1.3 ) # 1.0
round always breaks ties away from zero.
round (0.5 ) # 1.0 round (1.5 ) # 2.0 Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
floor, ceil, and trunc always return an Integral value, while round returns an
Integral value if called with one argument.
round (1.3 ) # 1 round (1.33 , 1 ) # 1.3
round breaks ties towards the nearest even number. This corrects the bias
towards larger numbers when performing a large number of calculations.
round (0.5 ) # 0 round (1.5 ) # 2 Warning!
As with any floating-point representation, some fractions cannot be
represented exactly . This can lead to some unexpected rounding behavior.
round (2.675 , 2 ) # 2.67, not 2.68! Warning about the floor, trunc, and
integer division of negative numbers
Python (and C++ and Java) round away from zero for negative numbers.
Consider:

>>> math .floor(1.7 )

-2.0
>>> 5 // 2
-3

Section 45.2: Trigonometry

Calculating the length of the hypotenuse
math .hypot(2 , 4 ) # Just a shorthand for SquareRoot(2**2 + 4**2) # Out:
4.47213595499958
Converting degrees to/from radians
All math functions expect radians so you need to convert degrees to radians:
math .radians(45 ) # Convert 45 degrees to radians # Out:
0.7853981633974483
All results of the inverse trigonometric functions return the result in radians,
so you may need to convert it back to degrees:
math .degrees(math .asin(1 )) # Convert the result of asin to degrees # Out:
90.0
Sine, cosine, tangent and inverse functions

# Sine and arc sine

math .sin(math .pi / 2 )
# Out: 1.0
math .sin(math .radians(90 )) # Sine of 90 degrees
# Out: 1.0

math .asin(1 )
# Out: 1.5707963267948966 # "= pi / 2" math .asin(1 ) / math .pi
# Out: 0.5

# Cosine and arc cosine:

math .cos(math .pi / 2 )
# Out: 6.123233995736766e-17
# Almost zero but not exactly because "pi" is a float with limited precision!

math .acos(1 ) # Out: 0.0

# Tangent and arc tangent:

math .tan(math .pi/2 )
# Out: 1.633123935319537e+16
# Very large but not exactly "Inf" because "pi" is a float with limited
precision

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5

math .atan(math .inf)
# Out: 1.5707963267948966 # This is just "pi / 2"
math .atan(float ('inf' ))
# Out: 1.5707963267948966 # This is just "pi / 2"
Apart from the math .atan there is also a two-argument math .atan2 function,
which computes the correct quadrant and avoids pitfalls of division by zero:
math .atan2(1 , 2 ) # Equivalent to "math.atan(1/2)" # Out:
0.4636476090008061 # ≈ 26.57 degrees, 1st quadrant
math .atan2(1 , 2 ) # Not equal to "math.atan(-1/-2)" == "math.atan(1/2)" #
Out: -2.677945044588987 # ≈ -153.43 degrees (or 206.57 degrees), 3rd
quadrant
math .atan2(1 , 0 ) # math.atan(1/0) would raise ZeroDivisionError # Out:
1.5707963267948966 # This is just "pi / 2"
Hyperbolic sine, cosine and tangent

# Hyperbolic sine function

math .sinh(math .pi) # = 11.548739357257746
math .asinh(1 ) # = 0.8813735870195429

# Hyperbolic cosine function

math .cosh(math .pi) # = 11.591953275521519 math .acosh(1 ) # = 0.0

# Hyperbolic tangent function

math .tanh(math .pi) # = 0.99627207622075 math .atanh(0.5 ) # =
0.5493061443340549
Section 45.3: Pow for faster exponentiation

Using the timeit module from the command line:

> python -m timeit 'for x in xrange(50000): b = x**3'

10 loops, best of 3 : 51.2 msec per loop
> python -m timeit 'from math import pow' 'for x in xrange(50000): b =
pow(x,3)' 100 loops, best of 3 : 9.15 msec per loop

The built-in ** operator often comes in handy, but if performance is of the

essence, use math.pow. Be sure to note, however, that pow returns floats,
even if the arguments are integers:

> from math import pow > pow (5 , 5 )

3125.0

Section 45.4: Infinity and NaN ("not a number")

In all versions of Python, we can represent infinity and NaN ("not a number")
as follows:

pos_inf = float ('inf' ) # positive infinity

neg_inf = float ('-inf' ) # negative infinity
not_a_num = float ('nan' ) # NaN ("not a number")

In Python 3.5 and higher, we can also use the defined constants math .inf and
math .nan:
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5

pos_inf = math .inf neg_inf = math .inf not_a_num = math .nan

The string representations display as inf and -inf and nan:

pos_inf, neg_inf, not_a_num # Out: (inf, -inf, nan)
We can test for either positive or negative infinity with the isinf method:
math .isinf(pos_inf) # Out: True
math .isinf(neg_inf) # Out: True
We can test specifically for positive infinity or for negative infinity by direct
comparison:
pos_inf == float ('inf' ) # Out: True
# or == math.inf in Python 3.5+
neg_inf == float ('-inf' ) # Out: True
# or == -math.inf in Python 3.5+
neg_inf == pos_inf # Out: False
Python 3.2 and higher also allows checking for finiteness:
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.2 math .isfinite(pos_inf) # Out: False
math .isfinite(0.0 ) # Out: True
Comparison operators work as expected for positive and negative infinity:
import sys
sys .float_info.max
# Out: 1.7976931348623157e+308 (this is system-dependent)
pos_inf > sys .float_info.max # Out: True
neg_inf < sys .float_info.max # Out: True
But if an arithmetic expression produces a value larger than the maximum
that can be represented as a float , it will become infinity:
pos_inf == sys .float_info.max * 1.0000001 # Out: True
neg_inf == sys .float_info.max * 1.0000001
# Out: True
However division by zero does not give a result of infinity (or negative
infinity where appropriate), rather it raises a ZeroDivisionError exception.

try : x = 1.0 / 0.0

print (x)

except ZeroDivisionError : print ("Division by zero" )

# Out: Division by zero
Arithmetic operations on infinity just give infinite results, or sometimes NaN:
-5.0 * pos_inf == neg_inf # Out: True
-5.0 * neg_inf == pos_inf # Out: True
pos_inf * neg_inf == neg_inf # Out: True
0.0 * pos_inf # Out: nan
0.0 * neg_inf # Out: nan
pos_inf / pos_inf # Out: nan
NaN is never equal to anything, not even itself. We can test for it is with the
isnan method:
not_a_num == not_a_num # Out: False
math .isnan(not_a_num) Out: True
NaN always compares as "not equal", but never less than or greater than:
not_a_num != 5.0 # Out: True
# or any random value
not_a_num > 5.0 # Out: False
or not_a_num < 5.0 or not_a_num == 5.0
Arithmetic operations on NaN always give NaN. This includes multiplication
by -1: there is no "negative NaN".
5.0 * not_a_num # Out: nan
float ('-nan' )
# Out: nan
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5
-math .nan
# Out: nan
There is one subtle difference between the old float versions of NaN and
infinity and the Python 3.5+ math library constants:

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.5

math .inf is math .inf, math .nan is math .nan # Out: (True, True)

float ('inf' ) is float ('inf' ), float ('nan' ) is float ('nan' ) # Out: (False, False)

Section 45.5: Logarithms

math .log(x) gives the natural (base e) logarithm of x.

math .log(math .e) # 1.0

math .log(1 ) # 0.0
math .log(100 ) # 4.605170185988092

math .log can lose precision with numbers close to 1, due to the limitations of
floating-point numbers. In order to accurately calculate logs close to 1, use
math .log1p, which evaluates the natural logarithm of 1 plus the argument:
math .log(1 + 1e-20 ) # 0.0 math .log1p(1e-20 ) # 1e-20
math .log10 can be used for logs base 10:
math .log10(10 ) # 1.0 Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3.0
When used with two arguments, math .log(x, base) gives the logarithm of x
in the given base (i.e. log(x) / log(base).

math .log(100 , 10 ) # 2.0

math .log(27 , 3 ) # 3.0
math .log(1 , 10 ) # 0.0

Section 45.6: Constants

math modules includes two commonly used mathematical constants.
math .pi - The mathematical constant pi
math .e - The mathematical constant e (base of natural logarithm)

>>> from math import pi, e >>> pi

3.141592653589793
>>> e
2.718281828459045
>>>

Python 3.5 and higher have constants for infinity and NaN ("not a number").
The older syntax of passing a string to float () still works.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5 math .inf == float ('inf' ) # Out: True
-math .inf == float ('-inf' ) # Out: True

# NaN never compares equal to anything, even itself math .nan == float ('nan'
# Out: False

Section 45.7: Imaginary Numbers

Imaginary numbers in Python are represented by a "j" or "J" trailing the target
number.
1j # Equivalent to the square root of -1.
1j * 1j # = (-1+0j)

Section 45.8: Copying signs

In Python 2.6 and higher, math .copysign(x, y) returns x with the sign of y.
The returned value is always a float .
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.6

math .copysign(2 , 3 ) # 2.0

math .copysign(3 , 3 ) # -3.0
math .copysign(4 , 14.2 ) # 4.0
math .copysign(1 , 0.0 ) # -1.0, on a platform which supports signed zero

Section 45.9: Complex numbers and the cmath module

The cmath module is similar to the math module, but defines functions
appropriately for the complex plane.
First of all, complex numbers are a numeric type that is part of the Python
language itself rather than being provided by a library class. Thus we don't
need to import cmath for ordinary arithmetic expressions.
Note that we use j (or J) and not i.
z = 1 + 3j
We must use 1j since j would be the name of a variable rather than a numeric
literal.
1j * 1j
Out: (1 +0j)
1j ** 1j
# Out: (0.20787957635076193+0j) # "i to the i" == math.e ** -(math.pi/2)
We have the real part and the imag (imaginary) part, as well as the complex
conjugate:

# real part and imaginary part are both float type

z.real, z.imag
# Out: (1.0, 3.0)

z.conjugate()
# Out: (1-3j) # z.conjugate() == z.real - z.imag * 1j
The built-in functions abs and complex are also part of the language itself and
don't require any import:
abs (1 + 1j)
# Out: 1.4142135623730951 # square root of 2
complex (1 )
# Out: (1+0j)
complex (imag= 1 ) # Out: (1j)
complex (1 , 1 ) # Out: (1+1j)
The complex function can take a string, but it can't have spaces:
complex ('1+1j' ) # Out: (1+1j)
complex ('1 + 1j' )
# Exception: ValueError: complex() arg is a malformed string
But for most functions we do need the module, for instance sqrt:
import cmath
cmath .sqrt(1 ) # Out: 1j
Naturally the behavior of sqrt is different for complex numbers and real
numbers. In non-complex math the square root of a negative number raises an
exception:
import math
math .sqrt(1 )
# Exception: ValueError: math domain error
Functions are provided to convert to and from polar coordinates:
cmath .polar(1 + 1j)
# Out: (1.4142135623730951, 0.7853981633974483) # == (sqrt(1 + 1),
atan2(1, 1))
abs (1 + 1j), cmath .phase(1 + 1j)
# Out: (1.4142135623730951, 0.7853981633974483) # same as previous
calculation
cmath .rect(math .sqrt(2 ), math .atan(1 )) # Out:
(1.0000000000000002+1.0000000000000002j)

The mathematical field of complex analysis is beyond the scope of this

example, but many functions in the complex plane have a "branch cut",
usually along the real axis or the imaginary axis. Most modern platforms
support "signed zero" as specified in IEEE 754, which provides continuity of
those functions on both sides of the branch cut. The following example is
from the Python documentation:

cmath .phase(complex (1.0 , 0.0 )) # Out: 3.141592653589793

cmath .phase(complex (1.0 , 0.0 ))
# Out: -3.141592653589793
The cmath module also provides many functions with direct counterparts
from the math module.
In addition to sqrt, there are complex versions of exp, log, log10, the
trigonometric functions and their inverses (sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan), and
the hyperbolic functions and their inverses (sinh, cosh, tanh, asinh, acosh,
atanh). Note however there is no complex counterpart of math .atan2, the
two-argument form of arctangent.

cmath .log(1 +1j)

# Out: (0.34657359027997264+0.7853981633974483j)
cmath .exp(1j * cmath .pi)
# Out: (-1+1.2246467991473532e-16j) # e to the i pi == -1, within rounding
error
The constants pi and e are provided. Note these are float and not complex .
type (cmath .pi)
# Out: <class 'float'>
The cmath module also provides complex versions of isinf, and (for Python
3.2+) isfinite. See "Infinity and NaN". A complex number is considered
infinite if either its real part or its imaginary part is infinite.
cmath .isinf(complex (float ('inf' ), 0.0 )) # Out: True
Likewise, the cmath module provides a complex version of isnan. See
"Infinity and NaN". A complex number is considered "not a number" if either
its real part or its imaginary part is "not a number".
cmath .isnan(0.0 , float ('nan' )) # Out: True
Note there is no cmath counterpart of the math .inf and math .nan constants
(from Python 3.5 and higher)
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5
cmath .isinf(complex (0.0 , math .inf)) # Out: True
cmath .isnan(complex (math .nan, 0.0 )) # Out: True
cmath .inf
# Exception: AttributeError: module 'cmath' has no attribute 'inf'
In Python 3.5 and higher, there is an isclose method in both cmath and math
modules.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5
z = cmath .rect(*cmath .polar(1 +1j))
z
# Out: (1.0000000000000002+1.0000000000000002j)
cmath .isclose(z, 1 +1j) # True
Chapter 46: Complex math
Section 46.1: Advanced complex arithmetic
The module cmath includes additional functions to use complex numbers.
import cmath
This module can calculate the phase of a complex number, in radians:
z = 2 +3j # A complex number
cmath .phase(z) # 0.982793723247329
It allows the conversion between the cartesian (rectangular) and polar
representations of complex numbers:
cmath .polar(z) # (3.605551275463989, 0.982793723247329)
cmath .rect(2 , cmath .pi/2 ) # (0+2j)
The module contains the complex version of
Exponential and logarithmic functions (as usual, log is the natural logarithm
and log10 the decimal logarithm):

cmath .exp(z) # (-7.315110094901103+1.0427436562359045j)

cmath .log(z) # (1.2824746787307684+0.982793723247329j)
cmath .log10(100 ) # (2+1.3643763538418412j)

Square roots:
cmath .sqrt(z) # (1.6741492280355401+0.8959774761298381j)
Trigonometric functions and their inverses:

cmath .sin(z) # (9.15449914691143-4.168906959966565j) cmath .cos(z) #

(-4.189625690968807-9.109227893755337j) cmath .tan(z) #
(-0.003764025641504249+1.00323862735361j) cmath .asin(z) #
(0.5706527843210994+1.9833870299165355j) cmath .acos(z) #
(1.0001435424737972-1.9833870299165355j) cmath .atan(z) #
(1.4099210495965755+0.22907268296853878j) cmath .sin(z)**2 + cmath
.cos(z)**2 # (1+0j)

Hyperbolic functions and their inverses:

cmath .sinh(z) # (-3.59056458998578+0.5309210862485197j) cmath .cosh(z)

# (-3.7245455049153224+0.5118225699873846j) cmath .tanh(z) #
(0.965385879022133-0.009884375038322495j) cmath .asinh(z) #
(0.5706527843210994+1.9833870299165355j) cmath .acosh(z) #
(1.9833870299165355+1.0001435424737972j) cmath .atanh(z) #
(0.14694666622552977+1.3389725222944935j) cmath .cosh(z)**2 - cmath
.sin(z)**2 # (1+0j)
cmath .cosh((0 +1j)*z) - cmath .cos(z) # 0j

Section 46.2: Basic complex arithmetic

Python has built-in support for complex arithmetic. The imaginary unit is
denoted by j :
z = 2 +3j # A complex number
w = 1 -7j # Another complex number
Complex numbers can be summed, subtracted, multiplied, divided and
exponentiated:

z + w # (3-4j)
z - w # (1+10j)
z * w # (23-11j)
z / w # (-0.38+0.34j) z**3 # (-46+9j)

Python can also extract the real and imaginary parts of complex numbers, and
calculate their absolute value and conjugate:

z.real # 2.0
z.imag # 3.0
abs (z) # 3.605551275463989 z.conjugate() # (2-3j)

Chapter 47: Collections module

The built-in collections package provides several specialized, flexible
collection types that are both highperformance and provide alternatives to the
general collection types of dict , list , tuple and set . The module also defines
abstract base classes describing different types of collection functionality
(such as MutableSet and ItemsView).

Section 47.1: collections.Counter

Counter is a dict sub class that allows you to easily count objects. It has
utility methods for working with the frequencies of the objects that you are
counting.
import collections
counts = collections .Counter([1 , 2 , 3 ])
the above code creates an object, counts, which has the frequencies of all the
elements passed to the constructor. This example has the value Counter({1 : 1
, 2 : 1 , 3 : 1 })
Constructor examples
Letter Counter
>>> collections .Counter('Happy Birthday' )
Counter({'a' : 2 , 'p' : 2 , 'y' : 2 , 'i' : 1 , 'r' : 1 , 'B' : 1 , ' ' : 1 , 'H' : 1 , 'd' : 1 , 'h' :
Word Counter

>>> collections .Counter('I am Sam Sam I am That Sam-I-am That Sam-I-am!

I do not like that Sam-Iam' .split())
Counter({'I' : 3 , 'Sam' : 2 , 'Sam-I-am' : 2 , 'That' : 2 , 'am' : 2 , 'do' : 1 , 'Sam-I-am!'
1 , 'that' : 1 , 'not' : 1 , 'like' : 1 })

Recipes
>>> c = collections .Counter({'a' : 4 , 'b' : 2 , 'c' : 2 , 'd' : 0 })
Get count of individual element
>>> c['a' ]
4
Set count of individual element

>>> c['c' ] = 3
>>> c
Counter({'a' : 4 , 'b' : 2 , 'd' : 0 , 'c' : 3 })

Get total number of elements in counter (4 + 2 + 0 - 3)

>>> sum (c.itervalues()) # negative numbers are counted!
3
Get elements (only those with positive counter are kept)
>>> list (c.elements())
['a' , 'a' , 'a' , 'a' , 'b' , 'b' ]
Remove keys with 0 or negative value
>>> c - collections .Counter() Counter({'a' : 4 , 'b' : 2 })
Remove everything

>>> c.clear() >>> c

Counter()

Add remove individual elements

>>> c.update({'a' : 3 , 'b' :3 })

>>> c.update({'a' : 2 , 'c' :2 }) # adds to existing, sets if they don't exist >>> c
Counter({'a' : 5 , 'b' : 3 , 'c' : 2 })
>>> c.subtract({'a' : 3 , 'b' : 3 , 'c' : 3 }) # subtracts (negative values are
allowed) >>> c
Counter({'a' : 2 , 'b' : 0 , 'c' : 1 })

Section 47.2: collections.OrderedDict

The order of keys in Python dictionaries is arbitrary: they are not governed by
the order in which you add them.
For example:

>>> d = {'foo' : 5 , 'bar' : 6 }

>>> print (d)
{'foo' : 5 , 'bar' : 6 }
>>> d['baz' ] = 7
>>> print (a)
{'baz' : 7 , 'foo' : 5 , 'bar' : 6 }
>>> d['foobar' ] = 8
>>> print (a)
{'baz' : 7 , 'foo' : 5 , 'bar' : 6 , 'foobar' : 8 }
```

(The arbitrary ordering implied above means that you may get different
results with the above code to that shown here.)
The order in which the keys appear is the order which they would be iterated
over, e.g. using a for loop.
The collections .OrderedDict class provides dictionary objects that retain the
order of keys. OrderedDicts can be created as shown below with a series of
ordered items (here, a list of tuple key-value pairs):
>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> d = OrderedDict([('foo' , 5 ), ('bar' , 6 )]) >>> print (d)
OrderedDict([('foo' , 5 ), ('bar' , 6 )])
>>> d['baz' ] = 7
>>> print (d)
OrderedDict([('foo' , 5 ), ('bar' , 6 ), ('baz' , 7 )]) >>> d['foobar' ] = 8

>>> print (d)

OrderedDict([('foo' , 5 ), ('bar' , 6 ), ('baz' , 7 ), ('foobar' , 8 )])
Or we can create an empty OrderedDict and then add items:

>>> o = OrderedDict()
>>> o['key1' ] = "value1"
>>> o['key2' ] = "value2"
>>> print (o)
OrderedDict([('key1' , 'value1' ), ('key2' , 'value2' )])

Iterating through an OrderedDict allows key access in the order they were
added.
What happens if we assign a new value to an existing key?

>>> d['foo' ] = 4
>>> print (d)
OrderedDict([('foo' , 4 ), ('bar' , 6 ), ('baz' , 7 ), ('foobar' , 8 )])

The key retains its original place in the OrderedDict.

Section 47.3: collections.defaultdict

collections.defaultdict (default_factory) returns a subclass of dict that has a

default value for missing keys. The argument should be a function that
returns the default value when called with no arguments. If there is nothing
passed, it defaults to None .

>>> state_capitals = collections .defaultdict(str ) >>> state_capitals

defaultdict(< class 'str' >, {})

returns a reference to a defaultdict that will create a string object with its
default_factory method.
A typical usage of defaultdict is to use one of the builtin types such as str , int
, list or dict as the default_factory, since these return empty types when called
with no arguments:

>>> str () ''

>>> int () 0
>>> list []

Calling the defaultdict with a key that does not exist does not produce an
error as it would in a normal dictionary.

>>> state_capitals['Alaska' ]
''
>>> state_capitals
defaultdict(< class 'str' >, {'Alaska' : '' })

Another example with int :

>>> fruit_counts = defaultdict(int )

>>> fruit_counts['apple' ] += 2 # No errors should occur >>> fruit_counts
default_dict(int , {'apple' : 2 })
>>> fruit_counts['banana' ] # No errors should occur

0
>>> fruit_counts # A new key is created default_dict(int , {'apple' : 2 , 'banana'
0 })

Normal dictionary methods work with the default dictionary

>>> state_capitals['Alabama' ] = 'Montgomery'

>>> state_capitals
defaultdict(< class 'str' >, {'Alabama' : 'Montgomery' , 'Alaska' : '' })

Using list as the default_factory will create a list for each new key.

>>> s = [('NC' , 'Raleigh' ), ('VA' , 'Richmond' ), ('WA' , 'Seattle' ), ('NC' ,

'Asheville' )] >>> dd = collections .defaultdict(list )
>>> for k, v in s:
... dd[k].append(v)
>>> dd
defaultdict(< class 'list' >,

{ 'VA' : ['Richmond' ],
'NC' : ['Raleigh' , 'Asheville' ],
'WA' : ['Seattle' ]})

Section 47.4: collections.namedtuple

Define a new type Person using namedtuple like this:

Person = namedtuple('Person' , ['age' , 'height' , 'name' ])
The second argument is the list of attributes that the tuple will have. You can
list these attributes also as either space or comma separated string:
Person = namedtuple('Person' , 'age, height, name' )
or
Person = namedtuple('Person' , 'age height name' )
Once defined, a named tuple can be instantiated by calling the object with the
necessary parameters, e.g.:
dave = Person(30 , 178 , 'Dave' )
Named arguments can also be used:
jack = Person(age= 30 , height= 178 , name= 'Jack S.' )
Now you can access the attributes of the namedtuple:
print (jack.age) # 30
print (jack.name) # 'Jack S.'
The first argument to the namedtuple constructor (in our example 'Person' ) is
the typename. It is typical to use the same word for the constructor and the
typename, but they can be different:
Human = namedtuple('Person' , 'age, height, name' )
dave = Human(30 , 178 , 'Dave' )
print (dave) # yields: Person(age=30, height=178, name='Dave')

Section 47.5: collections.deque

Returns a new deque object initialized left-to-right (using append()) with data
from iterable. If iterable is not specified, the new deque is empty.
Deques are a generalization of stacks and queues (the name is pronounced
“deck” and is short for “double-ended queue”). Deques support thread-safe,
memory efficient appends and pops from either side of the deque with
approximately the same O(1) performance in either direction.

Though list objects support similar operations, they are optimized for fast
fixed-length operations and incur O(n) memory movement costs for pop(0)
and insert(0, v) operations which change both the size and position of the
underlying data representation.

New in version 2.4.

If maxlen is not specified or is None , deques may grow to an arbitrary

length. Otherwise, the deque is bounded to the specified maximum length.
Once a bounded length deque is full, when new items are added, a
corresponding number of items are discarded from the opposite end. Bounded
length deques provide functionality similar to the tail filter in Unix. They are
also useful for tracking transactions and other pools of data where only the
most recent activity is of interest.

Changed in version 2.6: Added maxlen parameter.

>>> from collections import deque

>>> d = deque('ghi' ) # make a new deque with three items
>>> for elem in d: # iterate over the deque's elements
... print elem.upper() G
H
I

>>> d.append('j' ) >>> d.appendleft('f' )

# add a new entry to the right side # add a new entry to the left side >>> d #
show the representation of the deque deque(['f' , 'g' , 'h' , 'i' , 'j' ])

>>> d.pop()
'j'
>>> d.popleft() 'f'
>>> list (d)
['g' , 'h' , 'i' ] >>> d[0 ]
'g'
>>> d[1 ]
'i'

# return and remove the rightmost item

# return and remove the leftmost item
# list the contents of the deque
# peek at leftmost item
# peek at rightmost item
>>> list (reversed (d)) ['i' , 'h' , 'g' ]
# list the contents of a deque in reverse

>>> 'h' in d # search the deque True

>>> d.extend('jkl' )
>>> d
deque(['g' , 'h' , 'i' , 'j' , 'k' , 'l' ]) >>> d.rotate(1 )
>>> d

# add multiple elements at once

# right rotation

deque([ 'l' , 'g' , 'h' , 'i' , 'j' , 'k' ])

>>> d.rotate(1 ) # left rotation >>> d
deque(['g' , 'h' , 'i' , 'j' , 'k' , 'l' ])

>>> deque(reversed (d)) # make a new deque in reverse order deque(['l' , 'k' , 'j'
'i' , 'h' , 'g' ])
>>> d.clear() # empty the deque
>>> d.pop() # cannot pop from an empty deque Traceback (most recent call
last):

File "<pyshell#6>" , line 1 , in -toplevel

d.pop()
IndexError : pop from an empty deque

>>> d.extendleft('abc' ) # extendleft() reverses the input order >>> d

deque(['c' , 'b' , 'a' ])
Source: https://docs.python.org/2/library/collections.html

Section 47.6: collections.ChainMap

ChainMap is new in version 3.3

Returns a new ChainMap object given a number of maps. This object groups
multiple dicts or other mappings together to create a single, updateable view.

ChainMap s are useful managing nested contexts and overlays. An example

in the python world is found in the implementation of the Context class in
Django's template engine. It is useful for quickly linking a number of
mappings so that the result can be treated as a single unit. It is often much
faster than creating a new dictionary and running multiple update() calls.

Anytime one has a chain of lookup values there can be a case for ChainMap.
An example includes having both user specified values and a dictionary of
default values. Another example is the POST and GET parameter maps found
in web use, e.g. Django or Flask. Through the use of ChainMap one returns a
combined view of two distinct dictionaries.

The maps parameter list is ordered from first-searched to last-searched.

Lookups search the underlying mappings successively until a key is found. In
contrast, writes, updates, and deletions only operate on the first mapping.
import collections

# define two dictionaries with at least some keys overlapping. dict1 = {'apple'
: 1 , 'banana' : 2 }
dict2 = {'coconut' : 1 , 'date' : 1 , 'apple' : 3 }

# create two ChainMaps with different ordering of those dicts. combined_dict

= collections .ChainMap(dict1, dict2) reverse_ordered_dict = collections
.ChainMap(dict2, dict1)

Note the impact of order on which value is found first in the subsequent
lookup
for k, v in combined_dict.items(): print (k, v)

date 1
apple 1 banana 2 coconut 1

for k, v in reverse_ordered_dict.items(): print (k, v)

date 1
apple 3
banana 2 coconut 1

Chapter 48: Operator module

Section 48.1: Itemgetter

Grouping the key-value pairs of a dictionary by the value with itemgetter:

from itertools import groupby

from operator import itemgetter
adict = {'a' : 1 , 'b' : 5 , 'c' : 1 }

dict ((i, dict (v)) for i, v in groupby(adict.items(), itemgetter(1 )))

# Output: {1: {'a': 1, 'c': 1}, 5: {'b': 5}}
which is equivalent (but faster) to a lambda function like this:
dict ((i, dict (v)) for i, v in groupby(adict.items(), lambda x: x[1 ]))
Or sorting a list of tuples by the second element first the first element as
secondary:

alist_of_tuples = [(5 , 2 ), (1 , 3 ), (2 , 2 )]
sorted (alist_of_tuples, key= itemgetter(1 , 0 ))
# Output: [(2, 2), (5, 2), (1, 3)]

Section 48.2: Operators as alternative to an infix operator

For every infix operator, e.g. + there is an operator -function (operator .add
for +):

1+1
# Output: 2
from operator import add
add(1 , 1 )
# Output: 2

even though the main documentation states that for the arithmetic operators
only numerical input is allowed it is possible:

from operator import mul

mul('a' , 10 )
# Output: 'aaaaaaaaaa'
mul([3 ], 3 )
# Output: [3, 3, 3]

See also: mapping from operation to operator function in the official Python
documentation .

Section 48.3: Methodcaller

Instead of this lambda -function that calls the method explicitly:

alist = ['wolf' , 'sheep' , 'duck' ]

list (filter (lambda x: x.startswith('d' ), alist)) # Keep only elements that start
with 'd' # Output: ['duck']

one could use a operator-function that does the same:

from operator import methodcaller
list (filter (methodcaller('startswith' , 'd' ), alist)) # Does the same but is faster.
# Output: ['duck']

Chapter 49: JSON Module

Section 49.1: Storing data in a file

The following snippet encodes the data stored in d into JSON and stores it in
a file (replace filename with the actual name of the file).
import json

d={
'foo' : 'bar' ,
'alice' : 1 ,
'wonderland' : [1 , 2 , 3 ]

}
with open (filename, 'w' ) as f:
json.dump(d, f)

Section 49.2: Retrieving data from a file

The following snippet opens a JSON encoded file (replace filename with the
actual name of the file) and returns the object that is stored in the file.
import json
with open (filename, 'r' ) as f: d = json.load(f)

Section 49.3: Formatting JSON output

Let's say we have the following data:
>>> data = {"cats" : [{"name" : "Tubbs" , "color" : "white" }, {"name" :
"Pepper" , "color" : "black" }]}
Just dumping this as JSON does not do anything special here:
>>> print (json.dumps(data))
{"cats" : [{"name" : "Tubbs" , "color" : "white" }, {"name" : "Pepper" , "color"
"black" }]} Setting indentation to get prettier output
If we want pretty printing, we can set an indent size:
>>> print (json.dumps(data, indent= 2 ))
{

"cats" : [ {
"name" : "Tubbs" , "color" : "white"

},
{
"name" : "Pepper" , "color" : "black"
}
]
}
Sorting keys alphabetically to get consistent output
By default the order of keys in the output is undefined. We can get them in
alphabetical order to make sure we always get the same output:
>>> print (json.dumps(data, sort_keys= True ))
{"cats" : [{"color" : "white" , "name" : "Tubbs" }, {"color" : "black" , "name"
"Pepper" }]} Getting rid of whitespace to get compact output
We might want to get rid of the unnecessary spaces, which is done by setting
separator strings different from the default ', ' and ': ' :
>>> print (json.dumps(data, separators= (',' , ':' )))
{"cats" :[{"name" :"Tubbs" , "color" :"white" }, {"name" :"Pepper" , "color"
:"black" }]}

Section 49.4: `load` vs `loads`, `dump` vs `dumps`

The json module contains functions for both reading and writing to and from
unicode strings, and reading and writing to and from files. These are
differentiated by a trailing s in the function name. In these examples we use a
StringIO object, but the same functions would apply for any file-like object.

Here we use the string-based functions:

import json

data = {u"foo" : u"bar" , u"baz" : []} json_string = json.dumps(data) #

u'{"foo": "bar", "baz": []}' json.loads(json_string)
# {u"foo": u"bar", u"baz": []}

And here we use the file-based functions:

import json
from io import StringIO

json_file = StringIO ()
data = {u"foo" : u"bar" , u"baz" : []}
json.dump(data, json_file)
json_file.seek(0 ) # Seek back to the start of the file before reading
json_file_content = json_file.read()
# u'{"foo": "bar", "baz": []}'
json_file.seek(0 ) # Seek back to the start of the file before reading
json.load(json_file)
# {u"foo": u"bar", u"baz": []}

As you can see the main difference is that when dumping json data you must
pass the file handle to the function, as opposed to capturing the return value.
Also worth noting is that you must seek to the start of the file before reading
or writing, in order to avoid data corruption. When opening a file the cursor
is placed at position 0, so the below would also work:

import json
json_file_path = './data.json' data = {u"foo" : u"bar" , u"baz" : []} with open
(json_file_path, 'w' ) as json_file: json.dump(data, json_file)

with open (json_file_path) as json_file: json_file_content = json_file.read() #

u'{"foo": "bar", "baz": []}'

with open (json_file_path) as json_file: json.load(json_file)

# {u"foo": u"bar", u"baz": []}

Having both ways of dealing with json data allows you to idiomatically and
efficiently work with formats which build upon json, such as pyspark's json-
per-line:
# loading from a file
data = [json.loads(line) for line in open (file_path).splitlines()]
# dumping to a file
with open (file_path, 'w' ) as json_file: for item in data:
json.dump(item, json_file) json_file.write(' \n ' )

Section 49.5: Calling `json.tool` from the command line to

pretty-print JSON output
Given some JSON file "foo.json" like:
{ "foo" : { "bar" : { "baz" : 1 }}}
we can call the module directly from the command line (passing the filename
as an argument) to pretty-print it:
$ python -m json.tool foo.json {
"foo" : {
"bar" : {
"baz" : 1 }
}
}
The module will also take input from STDOUT, so (in Bash) we equally
could do: $ cat foo.json | python -m json.tool

Section 49.6: JSON encoding custom objects

If we just try the following:

import json
from datetime import datetime
data = {'datetime' : datetime (2016 , 9 , 26 , 4 , 44 , 0 )}
print (json.dumps(data))

we get an error saying TypeError : datetime .datetime (2016 , 9 , 26 , 4 , 44 ) is not

JSON serializable.
To be able to serialize the datetime object properly, we need to write custom
code for how to convert it:
class DatetimeJSONEncoder(json.JSONEncoder): def default(self , obj):
try :

return obj.isoformat()
except AttributeError :
# obj has no isoformat method; let the builtin JSON encoder handle it
return super (DatetimeJSONEncoder, self ).default(obj)

and then use this encoder class instead of json.dumps:

encoder = DatetimeJSONEncoder()
print (encoder.encode(data))
# prints {"datetime": "2016-09-26T04:44:00"}

Section 49.7: Creating JSON from Python dict

import json
d={
'foo' : 'bar' ,
'alice' : 1 ,
'wonderland' : [1 , 2 , 3 ]
}
json.dumps(d)

The above snippet will return the following: '{"wonderland": [1, 2, 3], "foo":
"bar", "alice": 1}'

Section 49.8: Creating Python dict from JSON

import json
s = '{"wonderland": [1, 2, 3], "foo": "bar", "alice": 1}'
json.loads(s)

The above snippet will return the following: {u'alice' : 1 , u'foo' : u'bar' ,
u'wonderland' : [1 , 2 , 3 ]}

Chapter 50: Sqlite3 Module

Section 50.1: Sqlite3 - Not require separate server process

The sqlite3 module was written by Gerhard Häring. To use the module, you
must first create a Connection object that represents the database. Here the
data will be stored in the example.db file:
import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3.connect('example.db' )
You can also supply the special name :memory: to create a database in RAM.
Once you have a Connection, you can create a Cursor object and call its
execute() method to perform SQL commands:
c = conn.cursor()
# Create table
c.execute('''CREATE TABLE stocks
(date text, trans text, symbol text, qty real, price real)''' )
# Insert a row of data
c.execute("INSERT INTO stocks VALUES ('2006-01-
05','BUY','RHAT',100,35.14)" )
# Save (commit) the changes
conn.commit()

# We can also close the connection if we are done with it.

# Just be sure any changes have been committed or they will be lost.
conn.close()

Section 50.2: Getting the values from the database and Error
handling

Fetching the values from the SQLite3 database.

Print row values returned by select query

import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3.connect('example.db' )
c = conn.cursor()
c.execute("SELECT * from table_name where id=cust_id" )
for row in c:

print row # will be a list

To fetch single matching fetchone() method
print c.fetchone()
For multiple rows use fetchall() method
a= c.fetchall() #which is similar to list(cursor) method used previously for
row in a:
print row
Error handling can be done using sqlite3.Error built in function

try : #SQL Code

except sqlite3.Error as e:
print "An error occurred:" , e.args[0 ]

Chapter 51: The os Module

Parameter Details
Path A path to a file. The path separator may be determined by os .path.sep.
Mode The desired permission, in octal (e.g. 0700 )

This module provides a portable way of using operating system dependent

functionality.

Section 51.1: makedirs - recursive directory creation

Given a local directory with the following contents:

└── dir1
├── subdir1
└── subdir2

We want to create the same subdir1, subdir2 under a new directory dir2,
which does not exist yet.
import os
os .makedirs("./dir2/subdir1" )
os .makedirs("./dir2/subdir2" )
Running this results in

├── dir1
│ ├── subdir1
│ └── subdir2
└── dir2

├── subdir1
└── subdir2
dir2 is only created the first time it is needed, for subdir1's creation.
If we had used os.mkdir instead, we would have had an exception because
dir2 would not have existed yet.
os .mkdir("./dir2/subdir1" )
OSError : [Errno 2 ] No such file or directory: './dir2/subdir1'
os.makedirs won't like it if the target directory exists already. If we re-run it
again:
OSError : [Errno 17 ] File exists: './dir2/subdir1'
However, this could easily be fixed by catching the exception and checking
that the directory has been created.
try :
os .makedirs("./dir2/subdir1" )
except OSError :
if not os .path.isdir("./dir2/subdir1" ):
raise

try :
os .makedirs("./dir2/subdir2" )
except OSError :

if not os .path.isdir("./dir2/subdir2" ): raise

Section 51.2: Create a directory

os .mkdir('newdir' )
If you need to specify permissions, you can use the optional mode argument:
os .mkdir('newdir' , mode= 0700 )

Section 51.3: Get current directory

Use the os .getcwd() function:
print (os .getcwd())

Section 51.4: Determine the name of the operating system

The os module provides an interface to determine what type of operating

system the code is currently running on.
os .name
This can return one of the following in Python 3:

posix
nt
ce
java

More detailed information can be retrieved from sys . platform

Section 51.5: Remove a directory

Remove the directory at path:

os .rmdir(path)
You should not use os .remove() to remove a directory. That function is for
files and using it on directories will result in an OSError

Section 51.6: Follow a symlink (POSIX)

Sometimes you need to determine the target of a symlink. os .readlink will do

this:
print (os .readlink(path_to_symlink))

Section 51.7: Change permissions on a file

os .chmod(path, mode)
where mode is the desired permission, in octal.

Chapter 52: The locale Module

Section 52.1: Currency Formatting US Dollars Using the locale
Module
import locale
locale .setlocale(locale .LC_ALL, '' )
Out[2 ]: 'English_United States.1252'
locale .currency(762559748.49 )
Out[3 ]: '$762559748.49'
locale .currency(762559748.49 , grouping= True )
Out[4 ]: '$762,559,748.49'

Chapter 53: Itertools Module

Section 53.1: Combinations method in Itertools Module
itertools .combinations will return a generator of the k -combination sequence
of a list.
In other words: It will return a generator of tuples of all the possible k-wise
combinations of the input list.
For Example:
If you have a list:

a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
b = list (itertools .combinations(a, 2 ))
print b

Output:
[(1 , 2 ), (1 , 3 ), (1 , 4 ), (1 , 5 ), (2 , 3 ), (2 , 4 ), (2 , 5 ), (3 , 4 ), (3 , 5 ), (4 , 5 )]
The above output is a generator converted to a list of tuples of all the possible
pair -wise combinations of the input list a
You can also find all the 3-combinations:

a = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
b = list (itertools .combinations(a, 3 ))
print b

Output:

[( 1 , 2 , 3 ), (1 , 2 , 4 ), (1 , 2 , 5 ), (1 , 3 , 4 ),
(1 , 3 , 5 ), (1 , 4 , 5 ), (2 , 3 , 4 ), (2 , 3 , 5 ),
(2 , 4 , 5 ), (3 , 4 , 5 )]

Section 53.2: itertools.dropwhile

itertools.dropwhile enables you to take items from a sequence after a
condition first becomes False .
def is_even(x):
return x % 2 == 0
lst = [0 , 2 , 4 , 12 , 18 , 13 , 14 , 22 , 23 , 44 ] result = list (itertools .dropwhile(is_even
lst))
print (result)
This outputs [ 13 , 14 , 22 , 23 , 44 ] .
(This example is same as the example for takewhile but using dropwhile. )
Note that, the first number that violates the predicate (i.e.: the function
returning a Boolean value) is_even is, 13. All the elements before that, are
discarded.
The output produced by dropwhile is similar to the output generated from
the code below.

def dropwhile(predicate, iterable): iterable = iter (iterable) for x in iterable:

if not predicate(x):
yield x
break

for x in iterable:
yield x
The concatenation of results produced by takewhile and dropwhile produces
the original iterable. result = list (itertools .takewhile(is_even, lst)) + list
(itertools .dropwhile(is_even, lst))

Section 53.3: Zipping two iterators until they are both

exhausted
Similar to the built-in function zip (), itertools .zip_longest will continue
iterating beyond the end of the shorter of two iterables.

from itertools import zip_longest

a = [i for i in range (5 )] # Length is 5
b = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' , 'f' , 'g' ] # Length is 7 for i in zip_longest(a, b):

x, y = i # Note that zip longest returns the values as a tuple print (x, y)
An optional fillvalue argument can be passed (defaults to '') like so:

for i in zip_longest(a, b, fillvalue= 'Hogwash!' ):

x, y = i # Note that zip longest returns the values as a tuple print (x, y)

In Python 2.6 and 2.7, this function is called itertools .izip_longest.

Section 53.4: Take a slice of a generator

Itertools "islice" allows you to slice a generator:

results = fetch_paged_results() # returns a generator limit = 20 # Only want

the first 20 results
for data in itertools .islice(results, limit):

print (data)
Normally you cannot slice a generator:

def gen():
n=0
while n < 20 :

n += 1 yield n
for part in gen()[:3 ]: print (part)
Will give
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "gen.py" , line 6 , in < module>
for part in gen()[:3 ]:
TypeError : 'generator' object is not subscriptable
However, this works:
import itertools

def gen():
n=0
while n < 20 :

n += 1 yield n
for part in itertools .islice(gen(), 3 ): print (part)
Note that like a regular slice, you can also use start, stop and step arguments:
itertools .islice(iterable, 1 , 30 , 3 )

Section 53.5: Grouping items from an iterable object using a

function
Start with an iterable which needs to be grouped
lst = [("a" , 5 , 6 ), ("b" , 2 , 4 ), ("a" , 2 , 5 ), ("c" , 2 , 6 )]
Generate the grouped generator, grouping by the second element in each
tuple:

def testGroupBy(lst):
groups = itertools .groupby(lst, key= lambda x: x[1 ])
for key, group in groups:

print (key, list (group))

testGroupBy(lst)
# 5 [('a', 5, 6)]
# 2 [('b', 2, 4), ('a', 2, 5), ('c', 2, 6)]
Only groups of consecutive elements are grouped. You may need to sort by
the same key before calling groupby For E.g, (Last element is changed)
lst = [("a" , 5 , 6 ), ("b" , 2 , 4 ), ("a" , 2 , 5 ), ("c" , 5 , 6 )] testGroupBy(lst)

# 5 [('a', 5, 6)]
# 2 [('b', 2, 4), ('a', 2, 5)] # 5 [('c', 5, 6)]

The group returned by groupby is an iterator that will be invalid before next
iteration. E.g the following will not work if you want the groups to be sorted
by key. Group 5 is empty below because when group 2 is fetched it
invalidates 5

lst = [("a" , 5 , 6 ), ("b" , 2 , 4 ), ("a" , 2 , 5 ), ("c" , 2 , 6 )] groups = itertools

.groupby(lst, key= lambda x: x[1 ]) for key, group in sorted (groups):
print (key, list (group))

# 2 [('c', 2, 6)] # 5 []
To correctly do sorting, create a list from the iterator before sorting
groups = itertools .groupby(lst, key= lambda x: x[1 ])
for key, group in sorted ((key, list (group)) for key, group in groups): print
(key, list (group))
# 2 [('b', 2, 4), ('a', 2, 5), ('c', 2, 6)] # 5 [('a', 5, 6)]

Section 53.6: itertools.takewhile

itertools.takewhile enables you to take items from a sequence until a
condition first becomes False .
def is_even(x):
return x % 2 == 0
lst = [0 , 2 , 4 , 12 , 18 , 13 , 14 , 22 , 23 , 44 ] result = list (itertools .takewhile(is_even
lst))
print (result)
This outputs [ 0 , 2 , 4 , 12 , 18 ] .
Note that, the first number that violates the predicate (i.e.: the function
returning a Boolean value) is_even is, 13. Once takewhile encounters a value
that produces False for the given predicate, it breaks out.
The output produced by takewhile is similar to the output generated from
the code below.
def takewhile(predicate, iterable): for x in iterable:
if predicate(x):

yield x
else :
break

Note: The concatenation of results produced by takewhile and dropwhile

produces the original iterable. result = list (itertools .takewhile(is_even, lst)) +
list (itertools .dropwhile(is_even, lst))

Section 53.7: itertools.permutations

itertools .permutations returns a generator with successive r-length
permutations of elements in the iterable.

a = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
list (itertools .permutations(a))
# [(1, 2, 3), (1, 3, 2), (2, 1, 3), (2, 3, 1), (3, 1, 2), (3, 2, 1)]

list (itertools .permutations(a, 2 ))

[(1 , 2 ), (1 , 3 ), (2 , 1 ), (2 , 3 ), (3 , 1 ), (3 , 2 )]
if the list a has duplicate elements, the resulting permutations will have
duplicate elements, you can use set to get unique permutations:

a = [1 , 2 , 1 ]
list (itertools .permutations(a))
# [(1, 2, 1), (1, 1, 2), (2, 1, 1), (2, 1, 1), (1, 1, 2), (1, 2, 1)]
set (itertools .permutations(a)) # {(1, 1, 2), (1, 2, 1), (2, 1, 1)}

Section 53.8: itertools.repeat

Repeat something n times:

>>> import itertools

>>> for i in itertools .repeat('over-and-over' , 3 ): ... print (i)
over-and-over
over-and-over
over-and-over

Section 53.9: Get an accumulated sum of numbers in an

iterable
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.2
accumulate yields a cumulative sum (or product) of numbers.
>>> import itertools as it >>> import operator
>>> list (it.accumulate([1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])) [1 , 3 , 6 , 10 , 15 ]
>>> list (it.accumulate([1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ], func= operator .mul)) [1 , 2 , 6 , 24 , 120

Section 53.10: Cycle through elements in an iterator

cycle is an infinite iterator.

>>> import itertools as it

>>> it.cycle('ABCD' )
A B C D A B C D A B C D ...

Therefore, take care to give boundaries when using this to avoid an infinite
loop. Example:

>>> # Iterate over each element in cycle for a fixed range >>> cycle_iterator =
it.cycle('abc123' )
>>> [next(cycle_iterator) for i in range (0 , 10 )] ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , '1' , '2' , '3' , 'a' , 'b'

Section 53.11: itertools.product

This function lets you iterate over the Cartesian product of a list of iterables.
For example,
for x, y in itertools .product(xrange (10 ), xrange (10 )): print x, y
is equivalent to
for x in xrange (10 ): for y in xrange (10 ): print x, y
Like all python functions that accept a variable number of arguments, we can
pass a list to itertools.product for unpacking, with the * operator.
Thus,
its = [xrange (10 )] * 2
for x, y in itertools .product(*its): print x, y
produces the same results as both of the previous examples.

>>> from itertools import product

>>> a= [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
>>> b= ['a' , 'b' , 'c' ]
>>> product(a, b)
< itertools .product object at 0x0000000002712F78 > >>> for i in product(a,
b):
... print i
...
(1 , 'a' )
(1 , 'b' )
(1 , 'c' )
(2 , 'a' )
(2 , 'b' )
(2 , 'c' )
(3 , 'a' )
(3 , 'b' )
(3 , 'c' )
(4 , 'a' )
(4 , 'b' )
(4 , 'c' )

Section 53.12: itertools.count

Introduction:
This simple function generates infinite series of numbers. For example...
for number in itertools .count():
if number > 20 :
break
print (number)
Note that we must break or it prints forever!
Output:

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Arguments:
count() takes two arguments, start and step:

for number in itertools .count(start= 10 , step= 4 ): print (number)

if number > 20 :

break
Output:

10
14
18
22

Section 53.13: Chaining multiple iterators together

Use itertools . chain to create a single generator which will yield the values
from several generators in sequence.
from itertools import chain
a = (x for x in ['1' , '2' , '3' , '4' ])
b = (x for x in ['x' , 'y' , 'z' ])
' ' .join(chain(a, b))

Results in:
'1 2 3 4 x y z'
As an alternate constructor, you can use the classmethod chain.from_iterable
which takes as its single parameter an iterable of iterables. To get the same
result as above:
' ' .join(chain.from_iterable([a, b])
While chain can take an arbitrary number of arguments, chain.from_iterable
is the only way to chain an infinite number of iterables.

Chapter 54: Asyncio Module

Section 54.1: Coroutine and Delegation Syntax

Before Python 3.5+ was released, the asyncio module used generators to
mimic asynchronous calls and thus had a different syntax than the current
Python 3.5 release.
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5
Python 3.5 introduced the async and await keywords. Note the lack of
parentheses around the await func() call.
import asyncio
async def main():
print (await func())

async def func():

# Do time intensive stuff...
return "Hello, world!"

if __name__ == "__main__" :
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(main())

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.3 Version < 3.5

Before Python 3.5, the @ asyncio.coroutine decorator was used to define a
coroutine. The yield from expression was used for generator delegation. Note
the parentheses around the yield from func().
import asyncio
@ asyncio.coroutine
def main():
print ((yield from func()))

@ asyncio.coroutine
def func():
# Do time intensive stuff..
return "Hello, world!"

if __name__ == "__main__" :
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(main())

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.5

Here is an example that shows how two functions can be run asynchronously:
import asyncio

async def cor1():

print ("cor1 start" )
for i in range (10 ):

await asyncio.sleep(1.5 )
print ("cor1" , i)

async def cor2():

print ("cor2 start" )
for i in range (15 ):

await asyncio.sleep(1 )
print ("cor2" , i)

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop() cors = asyncio.wait([cor1(), cor2()])

loop.run_until_complete(cors)
Section 54.2: Asynchronous Executors

Note: Uses the Python 3.5+ async/await syntax

asyncio supports the use of Executor objects found in concurrent.futures for

scheduling tasks asynchronously. Event loops have the function
run_in_executor() which takes an Executor object, a Callable, and the
Callable's parameters.

Scheduling a task for an Executor

import asyncio
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

def func(a, b):

# Do time intensive stuff... return a + b

async def main(loop):

executor = ThreadPoolExecutor()
result = await loop.run_in_executor(executor, func, "Hello," , " world!" ) print
(result)

if __name__ == "__main__" :
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop() loop.run_until_complete(main(loop))

Each event loop also has a "default" Executor slot that can be assigned to an
Executor. To assign an Executor and schedule tasks from the loop you use
the set_default_executor() method.
import asyncio
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

def func(a, b):

# Do time intensive stuff... return a + b

async def main(loop):

# NOTE: Using `None` as the first parameter designates the `default`
Executor. result = await loop.run_in_executor(None , func, "Hello," , " world!"
) print (result)
if __name__ == "__main__" :
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.set_default_executor(ThreadPoolExecutor())
loop.run_until_complete(main(loop))

There are two main types of Executor in concurrent.futures, the

ThreadPoolExecutor and the ProcessPoolExecutor. The ThreadPoolExecutor
contains a pool of threads which can either be manually set to a specific
number of threads through the constructor or defaults to the number of cores
on the machine times 5. The ThreadPoolExecutor uses the pool of threads to
execute tasks assigned to it and is generally better at CPU-bound operations
rather than I/O bound operations. Contrast that to the ProcessPoolExecutor
which spawns a new process for each task assigned to it. The
ProcessPoolExecutor can only take tasks and parameters that are picklable.
The most common non-picklable tasks are the methods of objects. If you
must schedule an object's method as a task in an Executor you must use a
ThreadPoolExecutor.

Section 54.3: Using UVLoop

uvloop is an implementation for the asyncio.AbstractEventLoop based on

libuv (Used by nodejs). It is compliant with 99% of asyncio features and is
much faster than the traditional asyncio.EventLoop. uvloop is currently not
available on Windows, install it with pip install uvloop.

import asyncio import uvloop

if __name__ == "__main__" :
asyncio.set_event_loop(uvloop.new_event_loop()) # Do your stuff here ...

One can also change the event loop factory by setting the EventLoopPolicy to
the one in uvloop.
import asyncio import uvloop

if __name__ == "__main__" :
asyncio.set_event_loop_policy(uvloop.EventLoopPolicy()) loop =
asyncio.new_event_loop()
Section 54.4: Synchronization Primitive: Event

Concept
Use an Event to synchronize the scheduling of multiple coroutines .
Put simply, an event is like the gun shot at a running race: it lets the runners
off the starting blocks.
Example
import asyncio

# event trigger function

def trigger(event):
print ('EVENT SET' )
event.set () # wake up coroutines waiting

# event consumers
async def consumer_a(event):
consumer_name = 'Consumer A'
print ('{} waiting' .format(consumer_name))
await event.wait()
print ('{} triggered' .format(consumer_name))

async def consumer_b(event):

consumer_name = 'Consumer B'
print ('{} waiting' .format(consumer_name)) await event.wait()
print ('{} triggered' .format(consumer_name))

# event
event = asyncio.Event()
# wrap coroutines in one future
main_future = asyncio.wait([consumer_a(event), consumer_b(event)])

# event loop
event_loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
event_loop.call_later(0.1 , functools.partial(trigger, event)) # trigger event in
0.1 sec

# complete main_future
done, pending = event_loop.run_until_complete(main_future)
Output:

Consumer B waiting Consumer A waiting EVENT SET

Consumer B triggered Consumer A triggered

Section 54.5: A Simple Websocket

Here we make a simple echo websocket using asyncio. We define coroutines

for connecting to a server and sending/receiving messages. The
communications of the websocket are run in a main coroutine, which is run
by an event loop. This example is modified from a prior post .

import asyncio import aiohttp

session = aiohttp.ClientSession() # handles the context manager class
EchoWebsocket:
async def connect(self ):
self .websocket = await session.ws_connect("wss://echo.websocket.org" )
async def send(self , message): self .websocket.send_str(message)

async def receive(self ):

result = (await self .websocket.receive()) return result.data

async def main():

echo = EchoWebsocket()
await echo.connect()
await echo.send("Hello World!" )
print (await echo.receive()) # "Hello World!"

if __name__ == '__main__' :
# The main loop
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop() loop.run_until_complete(main())

Section 54.6: Common Misconception about asyncio

probably the most common misconception about asnycio is that it lets you
run any task in parallel - sidestepping the GIL (global interpreter lock) and
therefore execute blocking jobs in parallel (on separate threads). it does not !
asyncio (and libraries that are built to collaborate with asyncio) build on
coroutines: functions that (collaboratively) yield the control flow back to the
calling function. note asyncio.sleep in the examples above. this is an example
of a non-blocking coroutine that waits 'in the background' and gives the
control flow back to the calling function (when called with await). time .sleep
is an example of a blocking function. the execution flow of the program will
just stop there and only return after time .sleep has finished.

a real-live example is the requests library which consists (for the time being)
on blocking functions only. there is no concurrency if you call any of its
functions within asyncio. aiohttp on the other hand was built with asyncio in
mind. its coroutines will run concurrently.

if you have long-running CPU-bound tasks you would like to run in parallel
asyncio is not for you. for that you need threads or multiprocessing .
if you have IO-bound jobs running, you may run them concurrently using
asyncio.

Chapter 55: Random module

Section 55.1: Creating a random user password

In order to create a random user password we can use the symbols provided
in the string module. Specifically punctuation for punctuation symbols,
ascii_letters for letters and digits for digits:
from string import punctuation, ascii_letters, digits
We can then combine all these symbols in a name named symbols:
symbols = ascii_letters + digits + punctuation
Remove either of these to create a pool of symbols with fewer elements.
After this, we can use random .SystemRandom to generate a password. For a
10 length password:

secure_random = random .SystemRandom()

password = "" .join(secure_random.choice(symbols) for i in range (10 ))
print (password) # '^@g;J?]M6e'

Note that other routines made immediately available by the random

module — such as random .choice, random .randint, etc. — are unsuitable
for cryptographic purposes.

Behind the curtains, these routines use the Mersenne Twister PRNG , which
does not satisfy the requirements of a CSPRNG . Thus, in particular, you
should not use any of them to generate passwords you plan to use. Always
use an instance of SystemRandom as shown above.

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.6

Starting from Python 3.6, the secrets module is available, which exposes
cryptographically safe functionality.
Quoting the official documentation , to generate "a ten-character
alphanumeric password with at least one lowercase character, at least one
uppercase character, and at least three digits," you could:

import string
alphabet = string .ascii_letters + string .digits
while True :

password = '' .join(choice(alphabet) for i in range (10 ))

if (any (c.islower() for c in password)
and any (c.isupper() for c in password)
and sum (c.isdigit() for c in password) >= 3 ):
break

Section 55.2: Create cryptographically secure random numbers

By default the Python random module use the Mersenne Twister PRNG to
generate random numbers, which, although suitable in domains like
simulations, fails to meet security requirements in more demanding
environments.

In order to create a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number, one can

use SystemRandom which, by using os .urandom, is able to act as a
Cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator, CPRNG . The
easiest way to use it simply involves initializing the SystemRandom class.
The methods provided are similar to the ones exported by the random
module.
from random import SystemRandom secure_rand_gen = SystemRandom()
In order to create a random sequence of 10 int s in range [ 0 , 20 ] , one can
simply call randrange():
print ([secure_rand_gen.randrange(10 ) for i in range (10 )]) # [9, 6, 9, 2, 2,
3, 8, 0, 9, 9]
To create a random integer in a given range, one can use randint:
print (secure_rand_gen.randint(0 , 20 )) # 5
and, accordingly for all other methods. The interface is exactly the same, the
only change is the underlying number generator.
You can also use os . urandom directly to obtain cryptographically secure
random bytes.

Section 55.3: Random and sequences: shu ☐ e, choice and

sample
import random shuffle()
You can use random .shuffle() to mix up/randomize the items in a mutable
and indexable sequence. For example a list :
laughs = ["Hi" , "Ho" , "He" ]
random .shuffle(laughs) # Shuffles in-place! Don't do: laughs =
random.shuffle(laughs)
print (laughs)
# Out: ["He", "Hi", "Ho"] # Output may vary! choice()
Takes a random element from an arbitrary sequence :
print (random .choice(laughs))
# Out: He # Output may vary! sample()
Like choice it takes random elements from an arbitrary sequence but you can
specify how many:

# |--sequence--|--number--|
print (random .sample( laughs , 1 )) # Take one element # Out: ['Ho'] #
Output may vary!

it will not take the same element twice:

print (random .sample(laughs, 3 )) # Take 3 random element from the
sequence. # Out: ['Ho', 'He', 'Hi'] # Output may vary!
print (random .sample(laughs, 4 )) # Take 4 random element from the 3-item
sequence. ValueError: Sample larger than population

Section 55.4: Creating random integers and floats: randint,

randrange, random, and uniform
import random randint()
Returns a random integer between x and y (inclusive):
random .randint(x, y)
For example getting a random number between 1 and 8:
random .randint(1 , 8 ) # Out: 8 randrange()
random .randrange has the same syntax as range and unlike random .randint,
the last value is not inclusive:
random .randrange(100 ) random .randrange(20 , 50 )
# Random integer between 0 and 99 # Random integer between 20 and 49
random .rangrange(10 , 20 , 3 ) # Random integer between 10 and 19 with step
3 (10, 13, 16 and 19)
random
Returns a random floating point number between 0 and 1:
random .random () # Out: 0.66486093215306317
uniform
Returns a random floating point number between x and y (inclusive):
random .uniform(1 , 8 ) # Out: 3.726062641730108

Section 55.5: Reproducible random numbers: Seed and State

Setting a specific Seed will create a fixed random-number series:

random .seed(5 ) # Create a fixed state

print (random .randrange(0 , 10 )) # Get a random integer between 0 and 9
# Out: 9
print (random .randrange(0 , 10 ))
# Out: 4

Resetting the seed will create the same "random" sequence again:
random .seed(5 ) # Reset the random module to the same fixed state. print
(random .randrange(0 , 10 ))

# Out: 9
print (random .randrange(0 , 10 )) # Out: 4

Since the seed is fixed these results are always 9 and 4. If having specific
numbers is not required only that the values will be the same one can also just
use getstate and setstate to recover to a previous state:

save_state = random .getstate() # Get the current state print (random

.randrange(0 , 10 ))
# Out: 5
print (random .randrange(0 , 10 ))
# Out: 8

random .setstate(save_state) # Reset to saved state print (random

.randrange(0 , 10 ))
# Out: 5
print (random .randrange(0 , 10 ))
# Out: 8

To pseudo-randomize the sequence again you seed with None :

random .seed(None )
Or call the seed method with no arguments: random .seed()
Section 55.6: Random Binary Decision

import random
probability = 0.3

if random .random () < probability:

print ("Decision with probability 0.3" )
else :
print ("Decision with probability 0.7" )

Chapter 56: Functools Module

Section 56.1: partial
The partial function creates partial function application from another
function. It is used to bind values to some of the function's arguments (or
keyword arguments) and produce a callable without the already defined
arguments.

>>> from functools import partial

>>> unhex = partial(int , base= 16 )
>>> unhex.__doc__ = 'Convert base16 string to int'
>>> unhex('ca11ab1e' )
3390155550

partial(), as the name suggests, allows a partial evaluation of a function. Let's

look at following example:
In [2 ]: from functools import partial

In [ 3 ]: def f(a, b, c, x):

...: return 1000 *a + 100 *b + 10 *c + x ...:

In [4 ]: g = partial(f, 1 , 1 , 1 )
In [5 ]: print g(2 ) 1112
When g is created, f, which takes four arguments(a, b, c, x), is also partially
evaluated for the first three arguments, a, b, c, . Evaluation of f is completed
when g is called, g(2 ), which passes the fourth argument to f.
One way to think of partial is a shift register; pushing in one argument at the
time into some function. partial comes handy for cases where data is coming
in as stream and we cannot pass more than one argument.

Section 56.2: cmp_to_key

Python changed its sorting methods to accept a key function. Those functions
take a value and return a key which is used to sort the arrays.
Old comparison functions used to take two values and return -1, 0 or +1 if the
first argument is small, equal or greater than the second argument
respectively. This is incompatible to the new key-function.
That's where functools.cmp_to_key comes in:

>>> import functools

>>> import locale
>>> sorted (["A" , "S" , "F" , "D" ], key= functools.cmp_to_key(locale .strcoll))
['A' , 'D' , 'F' , 'S' ]

Example taken and adapted from the Python Standard Library

Documentation .

Section 56.3: lru_cache

The @ lru_cache decorator can be used wrap an expensive, computationally-

intensive function with a Least Recently Used cache. This allows function
calls to be memoized, so that future calls with the same parameters can return
instantly instead of having to be recomputed.

@ lru_cache(maxsize= None ) # Boundless cache def fibonacci(n):

if n < 2 :

return n
return fibonacci(n1 ) + fibonacci(n2 )
>>> fibonacci(15 )

In the example above, the value of fibonacci(3 ) is only calculated once,

whereas if fibonacci didn't have an LRU cache, fibonacci(3 ) would have
been computed upwards of 230 times. Hence, @ lru_cache is especially great
for recursive functions or dynamic programming, where an expensive
function could be called multiple times with the same exact parameters.

@ lru_cache has two arguments

maxsize : Number of calls to save. When the number of unique calls exceeds
maxsize, the LRU cache will remove the least recently used calls.
typed (added in 3.3): Flag for determining if equivalent arguments of
different types belong to different cache records (i.e. if 3.0 and 3 count as
different arguments)

We can see cache stats too:

>>> fib.cache_info()
CacheInfo(hits= 13 , misses= 16 , maxsize= None , currsize= 16 )
NOTE : Since @ lru_cache uses dictionaries to cache results, all parameters
for the function must be hashable for the cache to work.
Official Python docs for @ lru_cache . @ lru_cache was added in 3.2.

Section 56.4: total_ordering

When we want to create an orderable class, normally we need to define the
methods __eq()__, __lt__ (), __le__ (), __gt__ () and __ge__ ().
The total_ordering decorator, applied to a class, permits the definition of
__eq__ () and only one between __lt__ (), __le__ (), __gt__ () and __ge__ (),
and still allow all the ordering operations on the class.
@ total_ordering class Employee:
...
def __eq__ (self , other):
return ((self .surname, self .name) == (other.surname, other.name))
def __lt__ (self , other):
return ((self .surname, self .name) < (other.surname, other.name))

The decorator uses a composition of the provided methods and algebraic

operations to derive the other comparison methods. For example if we
defined __lt__ () and __eq()__ and we want to derive __gt__ (), we can
simply check not __lt__ () and not __eq()__.
Note : The total_ordering function is only available since Python 2.7.

Section 56.5: reduce

In Python 3.x, the reduce function already explained here has been removed
from the built-ins and must now be imported from functools.
from functools import reduce
def factorial(n):
return reduce (lambda a, b: (a*b), range (1 , n+1 ))

Chapter 57: The dis module

Section 57.1: What is Python bytecode?

Python is a hybrid interpreter. When running a program, it first assembles it

into bytecode which can then be run in the Python interpreter (also called a
Python virtual machine ). The dis module in the standard library can be used
to make the Python bytecode human-readable by disassembling classes,
methods, functions, and code objects.

>>> def hello():

... print "Hello, World"
...
>>> dis .dis (hello)

2 0 LOAD_CONST 1 ('Hello, World' )

3 PRINT_ITEM
4 PRINT_NEWLINE
5 LOAD_CONST 0 (None )
8 RETURN_VALUE

The Python interpreter is stack-based and uses a first-in last-out system.

Each operation code (opcode) in the Python assembly language (the

bytecode) takes a fixed number of items from the stack and returns a fixed
number of items to the stack. If there aren't enough items on the stack for an
opcode, the Python interpreter will crash, possibly without an error message.
Section 57.2: Constants in the dis module

EXTENDED_ARG = 145 # All opcodes greater than this have 2 operands

HAVE_ARGUMENT = 90 # All opcodes greater than this have at least 1
operands
cmp_op = ('<' , '<=' , '==' , '!=' , '>' , '>=' , 'in' , 'not in' , 'is' , 'is ... # A list of comparator
id' s. The indices are used as operands in some opcodes

# All opcodes in these lists have the respective types as there operands
hascompare = [107 ]
hasconst = [100 ]
hasfree = [135 , 136 , 137 ]
hasjabs = [111 , 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 , 119 ]
hasjrel = [93 , 110 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 143 ]
haslocal = [124 , 125 , 126 ]
hasname = [90 , 91 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 101 , 106 , 108 , 109 , 116 ]

# A map of opcodes to ids

opmap = {'BINARY_ADD' : 23 , 'BINARY_AND' : 64 , 'BINARY_DIVIDE'
21 , 'BIN... # A map of ids to opcodes
opname = [' STOP_CODE', ' POP_TOP', ' ROT_TWO', ' ROT_THREE', '
DUP_TOP', ' ...

Section 57.3: Disassembling modules

To disassemble a Python module, first this has to be turned into a .pyc file
(Python compiled). To do this, run
python -m compileall < file> .py
Then in an interpreter, run
import dis
import marshal

with open ("<file>.pyc" , "rb" ) as code_f:

code_f.read(8 ) # Magic number and modification time
code = marshal .load(code_f) # Returns a code object which can be
disassembled dis .dis (code ) # Output the disassembly
This will compile a Python module and output the bytecode instructions with
dis . The module is never imported so it is safe to use with untrusted code.

Chapter 58: The base64 Module

Parameter base64 .b64encode(s, altchars= None ) s

altchars
Description
A bytes-like object

A bytes-like object of length 2+ of characters to replace the '+' and '='

characters when creating the Base64 alphabet. Extra characters are ignored.

base64 .b64decode(s, altchars= None , validate= False )

s
altchars

validate A bytes-like object

A bytes-like object of length 2+ of characters to replace the '+' and '='

characters when creating the Base64 alphabet. Extra characters are ignored.

If validate is True, the characters not in the normal Base64 alphabet or the
alternative alphabet are not discarded before the padding check

base64 .standard_b64encode(s)
s
base64 .standard_b64decode(s)
s
base64 .urlsafe_b64encode(s)
s
base64 .urlsafe_b64decode(s)
s
b32encode(s)
s
b32decode(s)
s
base64 .b16encode(s)
s
base64 .b16decode(s)
s

base64 .a85encode(b, foldspaces= False , wrapcol= 0 , pad= False , adobe= False

)b
foldspaces
wrapcol
pad
adobe A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
A bytes-like object
If foldspaces is True, the character 'y' will be used instead of 4 consecutive
spaces.
The number characters before a newline (0 implies no newlines)
If pad is True, the bytes are padded to a multiple of 4 before encoding
If adobe is True, the encoded sequenced with be framed with '<~' and ''~>' as
used with Adobe products base64 .a85decode(b, foldspaces= False , adobe=
False , ignorechars= b' \t\n\r\v ' ) b

foldspaces A bytes-like object

If foldspaces is True, the character 'y' will be used instead of 4 consecutive

spaces.
adobe

ignorechars If adobe is True, the encoded sequenced with be framed with '<~'
and ''~>' as used with Adobe products

A bytes-like object of characters to ignore in the encoding process

base64 .b85encode(b, pad= False ) b

pad A bytes-like object

If pad is True, the bytes are padded to a multiple of 4 before encoding

base64 .b85decode(b) b
A bytes-like object

Base 64 encoding represents a common scheme for encoding binary into

ASCII string format using radix 64. The base64 module is part of the
standard library, which means it installs along with Python. Understanding of
bytes and strings is critical to this topic and can be reviewed here . This topic
explains how to use the various features and number bases of the base64
module.

Section 58.1: Encoding and Decoding Base64

To include the base64 module in your script, you must import it first:
import base64

The base64 encode and decode functions both require a bytes-like object . To
get our string into bytes, we must encode it using Python's built in encode
function. Most commonly, the UTF8 encoding is used, however a full list of
these standard encodings (including languages with different characters) can
be found here in the official Python Documentation. Below is an example of
encoding a string into bytes:

s = "Hello World!"
b = s.encode("UTF-8" )
The output of the last line would be:
b'Hello World!'
The b prefix is used to denote the value is a bytes object.
To Base64 encode these bytes, we use the base64 .b64encode() function:

import base64
s = "Hello World!"
b = s.encode("UTF-8" ) e = base64 .b64encode(b) print (e)
That code would output the following:
b'SGVsbG8gV29ybGQh'
which is still in the bytes object. To get a string out of these bytes, we can use
Python's decode() method with the UTF8 encoding:

import base64
s = "Hello World!"
b = s.encode("UTF-8" ) e = base64 .b64encode(b) s1 = e.decode("UTF-8" )
print (s1)

The output would then be:

SGVsbG8gV29ybGQh
If we wanted to encode the string and then decode we could use the base64
.b64decode() method:

import base64
# Creating a string
s = "Hello World!"
# Encoding the string into bytes
b = s.encode("UTF-8" )
# Base64 Encode the bytes
e = base64 .b64encode(b)
# Decoding the Base64 bytes to string
s1 = e.decode("UTF-8" )
# Printing Base64 encoded string
print ("Base64 Encoded:" , s1)
# Encoding the Base64 encoded string into bytes b1 = s1.encode("UTF-8" )
# Decoding the Base64 bytes
d = base64 .b64decode(b1)
# Decoding the bytes to string
s2 = d.decode("UTF-8" )
print (s2)

As you may have expected, the output would be the original string:
Base64 Encoded: SGVsbG8gV29ybGQh Hello World!

Section 58.2: Encoding and Decoding Base32

The base64 module also includes encoding and decoding functions for
Base32. These functions are very similar to the Base64 functions:

import base64
# Creating a string
s = "Hello World!"
# Encoding the string into bytes
b = s.encode("UTF-8" )
# Base32 Encode the bytes
e = base64 .b32encode(b)
# Decoding the Base32 bytes to string
s1 = e.decode("UTF-8" )
# Printing Base32 encoded string
print ("Base32 Encoded:" , s1)
# Encoding the Base32 encoded string into bytes b1 = s1.encode("UTF-8" )
# Decoding the Base32 bytes
d = base64 .b32decode(b1)
# Decoding the bytes to string
s2 = d.decode("UTF-8" )
print (s2)

This would produce the following output:

Base32 Encoded: JBSWY3DPEBLW64TMMQQQ==== Hello World!

Section 58.3: Encoding and Decoding Base16

The base64 module also includes encoding and decoding functions for
Base16. Base 16 is most commonly referred to as hexadecimal . These
functions are very similar to the both the Base64 and Base32 functions:

import base64
# Creating a string
s = "Hello World!"
# Encoding the string into bytes
b = s.encode("UTF-8" )
# Base16 Encode the bytes
e = base64 .b16encode(b)
# Decoding the Base16 bytes to string
s1 = e.decode("UTF-8" )
# Printing Base16 encoded string
print ("Base16 Encoded:" , s1)
# Encoding the Base16 encoded string into bytes b1 = s1.encode("UTF-8" )
# Decoding the Base16 bytes
d = base64 .b16decode(b1)
# Decoding the bytes to string
s2 = d.decode("UTF-8" )
print (s2)

This would produce the following output:

Base16 Encoded: 48656C6C6F20576F726C6421 Hello World!

Section 58.4: Encoding and Decoding ASCII85

Adobe created its own encoding called ASCII85 which is similar to Base85,
but has its differences. This encoding is used frequently in Adobe PDF files.
These functions were released in Python version 3.4. Otherwise, the functions
base64 .a85encode() and base64 .a85encode() are similar to the previous:

import base64
# Creating a string
s = "Hello World!"
# Encoding the string into bytes
b = s.encode("UTF-8" )
# ASCII85 Encode the bytes
e = base64 .a85encode(b)
# Decoding the ASCII85 bytes to string
s1 = e.decode("UTF-8" )
# Printing ASCII85 encoded string
print ("ASCII85 Encoded:" , s1)
# Encoding the ASCII85 encoded string into bytes b1 = s1.encode("UTF-8" )
# Decoding the ASCII85 bytes
d = base64 .a85decode(b1)
# Decoding the bytes to string
s2 = d.decode("UTF-8" )
print (s2)
This outputs the following:
ASCII85 Encoded: 87cURD]i,"Ebo80 Hello World!

Section 58.5: Encoding and Decoding Base85

Just like the Base64, Base32, and Base16 functions, the Base85 encoding and
decoding functions are base64 .b85encode() and base64 .b85decode():

import base64
# Creating a string
s = "Hello World!"
# Encoding the string into bytes
b = s.encode("UTF-8" )
# Base85 Encode the bytes
e = base64 .b85encode(b)
# Decoding the Base85 bytes to string
s1 = e.decode("UTF-8" )
# Printing Base85 encoded string
print ("Base85 Encoded:" , s1)
# Encoding the Base85 encoded string into bytes b1 = s1.encode("UTF-8" )
# Decoding the Base85 bytes
d = base64 .b85decode(b1)
# Decoding the bytes to string
s2 = d.decode("UTF-8" )
print (s2)

which outputs the following:

Base85 Encoded: NM&qnZy;B1a%^NF Hello World!

Chapter 59: Queue Module

The Queue module implements multi-producer, multi-consumer queues. It is
especially useful in threaded programming when information must be
exchanged safely between multiple threads. There are three types of queues
provides by queue module,Which are as following : 1. Queue 2. LifoQueue 3.
PriorityQueue Exception which could be come: 1. Full (queue overflow) 2.
Empty (queue underflow)

Section 59.1: Simple example

from Queue import Queue

question_queue = Queue ()

for x in range (1 , 10 ):
temp_dict = ('key' , x)
question_queue.put(temp_dict)

while (not question_queue.empty()):

item = question_queue.get()
print (str (item))

Output:

( 'key' , 1 ) ('key' , 2 ) ('key' , 3 ) ('key' , 4 ) ('key' , 5 ) ('key' , 6 ) ('key' , 7 ) ('key'

('key' , 9 )

Chapter 60: Deque Module

Parameter Details
iterable Creates the deque with initial elements copied from another iterable.
maxlen Limits how large the deque can be, pushing out old elements as new
are added.

Section 60.1: Basic deque using

The main methods that are useful with this class are popleft and appendleft
from collections import deque

d = deque([1 , 2 , 3 ])
p = d.popleft() # p = 1, d = deque([2, 3])
d.appendleft(5 ) # d = deque([5, 2, 3])

Section 60.2: Available methods in deque

Creating empty deque:
dl = deque() # deque([]) creating empty deque
Creating deque with some elements:
dl = deque([1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]) # deque([1, 2, 3, 4])
Adding element to deque:
dl .append(5 ) # deque([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
Adding element left side of deque:
dl .appendleft(0 ) # deque([0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
Adding list of elements to deque:
dl .extend([6 , 7 ]) # deque([0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7])
Adding list of elements to from the left side:
dl .extendleft([2 , 1 ]) # deque([-1, -2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7])
Using .pop() element will naturally remove an item from the right side:
dl .pop() # 7 => deque([-1, -2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
Using .popleft() element to remove an item from the left side:
dl .popleft() # -1 deque([-2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
Remove element by its value:
dl .remove(1 ) # deque([-2, 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
Reverse the order of the elements in deque: dl .reverse() # deque([6, 5, 4, 3,
2, 0, -2])

Section 60.3: limit deque size

Use the maxlen parameter while creating a deque to limit the size of the
deque:

from collections import deque

d = deque(maxlen= 3 ) # only holds 3 items
d.append(1 ) # deque([1])
d.append(2 ) # deque([1, 2])
d.append(3 ) # deque([1, 2, 3])
d.append(4 ) # deque([2, 3, 4]) (1 is removed because its maxlen is 3)

Section 60.4: Breadth First Search

The Deque is the only Python data structure with fast Queue operations .
(Note queue.Queue isn't normally suitable, since it's meant for
communication between threads.) A basic use case of a Queue is the breadth
first search .
from collections import deque

def bfs(graph, root):

distances = {}
distances[root] = 0
q = deque([root])
while q:

# The oldest seen (but not yet visited) node will be the left most one.
current = q.popleft()
for neighbor in graph[current]:

if neighbor not in distances:

distances[neighbor] = distances[current] + 1
# When we see a new node, we add it to the right side of the queue.
q.append(neighbor)

return distances
Say we have a simple directed graph:
graph = {1 :[2 , 3 ], 2 :[4 ], 3 :[4 , 5 ], 4 :[3 , 5 ], 5 :[]}
We can now find the distances from some starting position:
>>> bfs(graph, 1 )
{1 : 0 , 2 : 1 , 3 : 1 , 4 : 2 , 5 : 2 }
>>> bfs(graph, 3 ) {3 : 0 , 4 : 1 , 5 : 1 }

Chapter 61: Webbrowser Module

Parameter
webbrowser .open ()
url
new
autoraise
webbrowser .open_new() url
webbrowser .open_new_tab() url
webbrowser .get()
using
webbrowser .register() url
constructor
instance

Details

the URL to open in the web browser

0 opens the URL in the existing tab, 1 opens in a new window, 2 opens in
new tab if set to True, the window will be moved on top of the other windows

the URL to open in the web browser

the URL to open in the web browser
the browser to use

browser name
path to the executable browser (help )
An instance of a web browser returned from the webbrowser .get() method

According to Python's standard documentation, the webbrowser module

provides a high-level interface to allow displaying Web-based documents to
users. This topic explains and demonstrates proper usage of the webbrowser
module.

Section 61.1: Opening a URL with Default Browser

To simply open a URL, use the webbrowser .open () method:

import webbrowser
webbrowser .open ("http://stackoverflow.com" )

If a browser window is currently open, the method will open a new tab at the
specified URL. If no window is open, the method will open the operating
system's default browser and navigate to the URL in the parameter. The open
method supports the following parameters:

url - the URL to open in the web browser (string) [required]

new - 0 opens in existing tab, 1 opens new window, 2 opens new tab (integer)
[default 0] autoraise - if set to True, the window will be moved on top of
other applications' windows (Boolean) [default False]

Note, the new and autoraise arguments rarely work as the majority of modern
browsers refuse these commands.
Webbrowser can also try to open URLs in new windows with the open_new
method:
import webbrowser
webbrowser .open_new("http://stackoverflow.com" )
This method is commonly ignored by modern browsers and the URL is
usually opened in a new tab. Opening a new tab can be tried by the module
using the open_new_tab method:
import webbrowser
webbrowser .open_new_tab("http://stackoverflow.com" )

Section 61.2: Opening a URL with Di ☐ erent Browsers

The webbrowser module also supports different browsers using the register()
and get() methods. The get method is used to create a browser controller
using a specific executable's path and the register method is used to attach
these executables to preset browser types for future use, commonly when
multiple browser types are used.

import webbrowser
ff_path = webbrowser .get("C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe" ) ff
= webbrowser .get(ff_path)
ff.open ("http://stackoverflow.com/" )

Registering a browser type:

import webbrowser
ff_path = webbrowser .get("C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe" ) ff
= webbrowser .get(ff_path)
webbrowser .register('firefox' , None , ff)
# Now to refer to use Firefox in the future you can use this webbrowser
.get('firefox' ).open ("https://stackoverflow.com/" )

Chapter 62: tkinter

Released in Tkinter is Python's most popular GUI (Graphical User Interface)
library. This topic explains proper usage of this library and its features.

Section 62.1: Geometry Managers

Tkinter has three mechanisms for geometry management: place, pack, and
grid.
The place manager uses absolute pixel coordinates.
The pack manager places widgets into one of 4 sides. New widgets are placed
next to existing widgets.
The grid manager places widgets into a grid similar to a dynamically resizing
spreadsheet.
Place
The most common keyword arguments for widget.place are as follows:

x , the absolute x-coordinate of the widget

y, the absolute y-coordinate of the widget
height, the absolute height of the widget
width, the absolute width of the widget

A code example using place:

class PlaceExample(Frame):
def __init__ (self , master):
Frame.__init__ (self , master)
self .grid()
top_text= Label(master, text= "This is on top at the origin" )
#top_text.pack()
top_text.place(x= 0 , y= 0 , height= 50 , width= 200 )
bottom_right_text= Label(master, text= "This is at position 200,400" )
#top_text.pack()
bottom_right_text.place(x= 200 , y= 400 , height= 50 , width= 200 )

# Spawn Window
if __name__== "__main__" :
root= Tk()
place_frame= PlaceExample(root)
place_frame.mainloop()

Pack
widget.pack can take the following keyword arguments:

expand , whether or not to fill space left by parent

fill, whether to expand to fill all space (NONE (default), X, Y, or BOTH)
side, the side to pack against (TOP (default), BOTTOM, LEFT, or RIGHT)

Grid
The most commonly used keyword arguments of widget.grid are as follows:

row , the row of the widget (default smallest unoccupied) rowspan, the
number of columns a widget spans (default 1) column, the column of the
widget (default 0)
columnspan, the number of columns a widget spans (default 1)
sticky, where to place widget if the grid cell is larger than it (combination of
N,NE,E,SE,S,SW,W,NW)

The rows and columns are zero indexed. Rows increase going down, and
columns increase going right.
A code example using grid:
from tkinter import *

class GridExample(Frame):
def __init__ (self , master):
Frame.__init__ (self , master)
self .grid()
top_text= Label(self , text= "This text appears on top left" )
top_text.grid() # Default position 0, 0
bottom_text= Label(self , text= "This text appears on bottom left" )
bottom_text.grid() # Default position 1, 0
right_text= Label(self , text= "This text appears on the right and spans both
rows" ,

wraplength = 100 )
# Position is 0,1
# Rowspan means actual position is [0-1],1
right_text.grid(row= 0 , column= 1 , rowspan= 2 )

# Spawn Window
if __name__== "__main__" :
root= Tk()
grid_frame= GridExample(root)
grid_frame.mainloop()

Never mix pack and grid within the same frame! Doing so will lead to
application deadlock!

Section 62.2: A minimal tkinter Application

tkinter is a GUI toolkit that provides a wrapper around the Tk/Tcl GUI library
and is included with Python. The following code creates a new window using
tkinter and places some text in the window body.
Note: In Python 2, the capitalization may be slightly different, see Remarks
section below.
import tkinter as tk
# GUI window is a subclass of the basic tkinter Frame object
class HelloWorldFrame(tk.Frame):
def __init__ (self , master):

# Call superclass constructor

tk.Frame.__init__ (self , master)
# Place frame into main window
self .grid()
# Create text box with "Hello World" text
hello = tk.Label(self , text= "Hello World! This label can hold strings!" ) #
Place text box into frame
hello.grid(row= 0 , column= 0 )

# Spawn window
if __name__ == "__main__" : # Create main window object
root = tk.Tk()
# Set title of window
root.title("Hello World!" )
# Instantiate HelloWorldFrame object hello_frame = HelloWorldFrame(root)
# Start GUI
hello_frame.mainloop()

Chapter 63: pyautogui module

pyautogui is a module used to control mouse and keyboard. This module is
basically used to automate mouse click and keyboard press tasks. For the
mouse, the coordinates of the screen (0,0) start from the top-left corner. If
you are out of control, then quickly move the mouse cursor to top-left, it will
take the control of mouse and keyboard from the Python and give it back to
you.

Section 63.1: Mouse Functions

These are some of useful mouse functions to control the mouse.

size() #gave you the size of the screen

position() #return current position of mouse
moveTo(200 , 0 , duration= 1.5 ) #move the cursor to (200,0) position with 1.5
second delay moveRel()
click(337 , 46 )
dragRel()

#move the cursor relative to your current position.

#it will click on the position mention there

#it will drag the mouse relative to position

pyautogui.displayMousePosition() #gave you the current mouse position but
should be done on terminal.

Section 63.2: Keyboard Functions

These are some of useful keyboard functions to automate the key pressing.

typewrite( '' ) #this will type the string on the screen where current window
has focused. typewrite(['a' , 'b' , 'left' , 'left' , 'X' , 'Y' ])
pyautogui.KEYBOARD_KEYS #get the list of all the keyboard_keys.
pyautogui.hotkey('ctrl' , 'o' ) #for the combination of keys to enter.

Section 63.3: Screenshot And Image Recognition

These function will help you to take the screenshot and also match the image
with the part of the screen.

.screenshot( 'c: \\ path' ) #get the screenshot.

.locateOnScreen('c: \\ path' ) #search that image on screen and get the
coordinates for you. locateCenterOnScreen('c: \\ path' ) #get the coordinate for
the image on screen.

Chapter 64: Indexing and Slicing

Paramer Description
obj The object that you want to extract a "sub-object" from
start
The index of obj that you want the sub-object to start from (keep in mind that
Python is zero-indexed, meaning that the first item of obj has an index of 0).
If omitted, defaults to 0.
stop The (non-inclusive) index of obj that you want the sub-object to end at.
If omitted, defaults to len (obj). step Allows you to select only every step
item. If omitted, defaults to 1.

Section 64.1: Basic Slicing

For any iterable (for eg. a string, list, etc), Python allows you to slice and
return a substring or sublist of its data.
Format for slicing:
iterable_name[start:stop:step]
where,

start is the first index of the slice. Defaults to 0 (the index of the first element)
stop one past the last index of the slice. Defaults to len(iterable)
step is the step size (better explained by the examples below)
Examples:
a = "abcdef"
a # "abcdef"

# Same as a[:] or a[::] since it uses the defaults for all three indices a[1 ] #
"f"
a[:] # "abcdef"
a[::] # "abcdef"
a[3 :] # "def" (from index 3, to end(defaults to size of iterable)) a[:4 ] #
"abcd" (from beginning(default 0) to position 4 (excluded)) a[2 :4 ] # "cd"
(from position 2, to position 4 (excluded))

In addition, any of the above can be used with the step size defined:
a[::2 ] # "ace" (every 2nd element)
a[1 :4 :2 ] # "bd" (from index 1, to index 4 (excluded), every 2nd element)
Indices can be negative, in which case they're computed from the end of the
sequence

a[:1 ] # "abcde" (from index 0 (default), to the second last element (last
element - 1)) a[:2 ] # "abcd" (from index 0 (default), to the third last element
(last element -2)) a[1 :] # "f" (from the last element to the end (default len())

Step sizes can also be negative, in which case slice will iterate through the list
in reverse order:
a[3 :1 :1 ] # "dc" (from index 2 to None (default), in reverse order)
This construct is useful for reversing an iterable
a[::1 ] # "fedcba" (from last element (default len()-1), to first, in reverse
order(-1))
Notice that for negative steps the default end_index is None (see
http://stackoverflow.com/a/12521981 )
a[5 :None :1 ] # "fedcba" (this is equivalent to a[::-1])
a[5 :0 :1 ] # "fedcb" (from the last element (index 5) to second element (index
1)

Section 64.2: Reversing an object

You can use slices to very easily reverse a str , list , or tuple (or basically any
collection object that implements slicing with the step parameter). Here is an
example of reversing a string, although this applies equally to the other types
listed above:

s = 'reverse me!'
s[::1 ] # '!em esrever'
Let's quickly look at the syntax. [::1 ] means that the slice should be from the
beginning until the end of the string (because start and end are omitted) and a
step of -1 means that it should move through the string in reverse.

Section 64.3: Slice assignment

Another neat feature using slices is slice assignment. Python allows you to
assign new slices to replace old slices of a list in a single operation.
This means that if you have a list, you can replace multiple members in a
single assignment:

lst = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
lst[1 :3 ] = [4 , 5 ]
print (lst) # Out: [1, 4, 5]

The assignment shouldn't match in size as well, so if you wanted to replace

an old slice with a new slice that is different in size, you could:

lst = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
lst[1 :4 ] = [6 ]
print (lst) # Out: [1, 6, 5]

It's also possible to use the known slicing syntax to do things like replacing
the entire list:

lst = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
lst[:] = [4 , 5 , 6 ]
print (lst) # Out: [4, 5, 6]

Or just the last two members:

lst = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
lst[2 :] = [4 , 5 , 6 ]
print (lst) # Out: [1, 4, 5, 6]

Section 64.4: Making a shallow copy of an array

A quick way to make a copy of an array (as opposed to assigning a variable
with another reference to the original array) is:
arr[:]

Let's examine the syntax. [:] means that start, end, and slice are all omitted.
They default to 0, len (arr), and 1, respectively, meaning that subarray that we
are requesting will have all of the elements of arr from the beginning until the
very end.

In practice, this looks something like:

arr = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' ]

copy = arr[:]
arr.append('d' )
print (arr) # ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'] print (copy ) # ['a', 'b', 'c']

As you can see, arr.append('d' ) added d to arr, but copy remained unchanged!
Note that this makes a shallow copy, and is identical to arr.copy ().

Section 64.5: Indexing custom classes: __getitem__,

__setitem__ and __delitem__

class MultiIndexingList:
def __init__ (self , value): self .value = value

def __repr__ (self ):

return repr (self .value)
def __getitem__ (self , item):
if isinstance (item, (int , slice )): return self .__class__(self .value[item])
return [self .value[i] for i in item]
def __setitem__ (self , item, value):
if isinstance (item, int ):
self .value[item] = value

elif isinstance (item, slice ):

raise ValueError ('Cannot interpret slice with multiindexing' )
else :
for i in item:
if isinstance (i, slice ):
raise ValueError ('Cannot interpret slice with multiindexing' ) self .value[i] =
value

def __delitem__ (self , item):

if isinstance (item, int ):
del self .value[item]
elif isinstance (item, slice ):

del self .value[item]

else :
if any (isinstance (elem, slice ) for elem in item):
raise ValueError ('Cannot interpret slice with multiindexing' )
item = sorted (item, reverse= True )
for elem in item:
del self .value[elem]

This allows slicing and indexing for element access:

a = MultiIndexingList([1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]) a
# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

a[ 1 , 5 , 2 , 6 , 1 ]
# Out: [2, 6, 3, 7, 2]
a[4 , 1 , 5 :, 2 , ::2 ]
# Out: [5, 2, [6, 7, 8], 3, [1, 3, 5, 7]]
# 4|1-|----50:---|2-|-----::2----- <-- indicated which element came from which
index

While setting and deleting elements only allows for comma separated integer
indexing (no slicing):
a[ 4 ] = 1000
a
# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 1000, 6, 7, 8] a[2 , 6 , 1 ] = 100
a
# Out: [1, 100, 100, 4, 1000, 6, 100, 8] del a[5 ]
a
# Out: [1, 100, 100, 4, 1000, 100, 8] del a[4 , 2 , 5 ]
a
# Out: [1, 100, 4, 8]

Section 64.6: Basic Indexing

Python lists are 0-based i.e. the first element in the list can be accessed by the
index 0

arr = ['a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' ]

print (arr[0 ])
>> 'a'

You can access the second element in the list by index 1, third element by
index 2 and so on:

print (arr[1 ]) >> 'b'

print (arr[2 ]) >> 'c'

You can also use negative indices to access elements from the end of the list.
eg. index -1 will give you the last element of the list and index -2 will give
you the second-to-last element of the list:

print (arr[1 ]) >> 'd'

print (arr[2 ]) >> 'c'

If you try to access an index which is not present in the list, an IndexError
will be raised:
print arr[6 ]
Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
IndexError : list index out of range
Chapter 65: Plotting with Matplotlib
Matplotlib ( https://matplotlib.org/) is a library for 2D plotting based on
NumPy. Here are some basic examples. More examples can be found in the
official documentation (https://matplotlib.org/2.0.2/gallery.html and
https://matplotlib.org/2.0.2/examples/index.html)

Section 65.1: Plots with Common X-axis but di ☐ erent Y-axis :

Using twinx()

In this example, we will plot a sine curve and a hyperbolic sine curve in the
same plot with a common x-axis having different y-axis. This is
accomplished by the use of twinx() command.

# Plotting tutorials in Python

# Adding Multiple plots by twin x axis
# Good for plots having different y axis range
# Separate axes and figure objects
# replicate axes object and plot curves
# use axes to set attributes

# Note:
# Grid for second curve unsuccessful : let me know if you find it! :(
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = np.linspace(0 , 2.0 *np.pi, 101 )

y = np.sin(x)
z = np.sinh(x)

# separate the figure object and axes object

# from the plotting object
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots()

# Duplicate the axes with a different y axis

# and the same x axis
ax2 = ax1.twinx() # ax2 and ax1 will have common x axis and different y axis
# plot the curves on axes 1, and 2, and get the curve handles
curve1, = ax1.plot(x, y, label= "sin" , color= 'r' )
curve2, = ax2.plot(x, z, label= "sinh" , color= 'b' )

# Make a curves list to access the parameters in the curves

curves = [curve1, curve2]

# add legend via axes 1 or axes 2 object.

# one command is usually sufficient
# ax1.legend() # will not display the legend of ax2
# ax2.legend() # will not display the legend of ax1
ax1.legend(curves, [curve.get_label() for curve in curves])
# ax2.legend(curves, [curve.get_label() for curve in curves]) # also valid

# Global figure properties

plt.title("Plot of sine and hyperbolic sine" )
Section 65.2: Plots with common Y-axis and di ☐ erent X-axis
using twiny()

In this example, a plot with curves having common y-axis but different x-axis
is demonstrated using twiny() method. Also, some additional features such as
the title, legend, labels, grids, axis ticks and colours are added to the plot.

# Plotting tutorials in Python

# Adding Multiple plots by twin y axis
# Good for plots having different x axis range
# Separate axes and figure objects
# replicate axes object and plot curves
# use axes to set attributes

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

y = np.linspace(0 , 2.0 *np.pi, 101 )

x1 = np.sin(y)
x2 = np.sinh(y)

# values for making ticks in x and y axis

ynumbers = np.linspace(0 , 7 , 15 )
xnumbers1 = np.linspace(1 , 1 , 11 )
xnumbers2 = np.linspace(0 , 300 , 7 )

# separate the figure object and axes object

# from the plotting object
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots()

# Duplicate the axes with a different x axis

# and the same y axis
ax2 = ax1.twiny() # ax2 and ax1 will have common y axis and different x axis

# plot the curves on axes 1, and 2, and get the axes handles curve1, =
ax1.plot(x1, y, label= "sin" , color= 'r' ) curve2, = ax2.plot(x2, y, label= "sinh"
color= 'b' )

# Make a curves list to access the parameters in the curves curves = [curve1,
curve2]

# add legend via axes 1 or axes 2 object.

# one command is usually sufficient
# ax1.legend() # will not display the legend of ax2
# ax2.legend() # will not display the legend of ax1
# ax1.legend(curves, [curve.get_label() for curve in curves])
ax2.legend(curves, [curve.get_label() for curve in curves]) # also valid
# x axis labels via the axes
ax1.set_xlabel("Magnitude" , color= curve1.get_color())
ax2.set_xlabel("Magnitude" , color= curve2.get_color())

# y axis label via the axes

ax1.set_ylabel("Angle/Value" , color= curve1.get_color())
# ax2.set_ylabel("Magnitude", color=curve2.get_color()) # does not work #
ax2 has no property control over y axis

# y ticks - make them coloured as well

ax1.tick_params(axis= 'y' , colors= curve1.get_color())
# ax2.tick_params(axis='y', colors=curve2.get_color()) # does not work #
ax2 has no property control over y axis

# x axis ticks via the axes

ax1.tick_params(axis= 'x' , colors= curve1.get_color()) ax2.tick_params(axis=
'x' , colors= curve2.get_color())

# set x ticks
ax1.set_xticks(xnumbers1) ax2.set_xticks(xnumbers2)

# set y ticks
ax1.set_yticks(ynumbers)
# ax2.set_yticks(ynumbers) # also works

# Grids via axes 1 # use this if axes 1 is used to # define the properties of
common x axis
# ax1.grid(color=curve1.get_color())

# To make grids using axes 2 ax1.grid(color= curve2.get_color())

ax2.grid(color= curve2.get_color()) ax1.xaxis.grid(False )

# Global figure properties

plt.title("Plot of sine and hyperbolic sine" )
Section 65.3: A Simple Plot in Matplotlib
This example illustrates how to create a simple sine curve using Matplotlib
# Plotting tutorials in Python
# Launching a simple plot
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# angle varying between 0 and 2*pi

x = np.linspace(0 , 2.0 *np.pi, 101 )
y = np.sin(x) # sine function

plt.plot(x, y)

Section 65.4: Adding more features to a simple plot : axis

labels, title, axis ticks, grid, and legend
In this example, we take a sine curve plot and add more features to it; namely
the title, axis labels, title, axis ticks, grid and legend.
# Plotting tutorials in Python
# Enhancing a plot
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = np.linspace(0 , 2.0 *np.pi, 101 )
y = np.sin(x)

# values for making ticks in x and y axis

xnumbers = np.linspace(0 , 7 , 15 )
ynumbers = np.linspace(1 , 1 , 11 )

plt.plot(x , y, color= 'r' , label= 'sin' ) # r - red colour

plt.xlabel("Angle in Radians" )
plt.ylabel("Magnitude" )
plt.title("Plot of some trigonometric functions" )
plt.xticks(xnumbers)
plt.yticks(ynumbers)
plt.legend()
plt.grid()
plt.axis([0 , 6.5 , 1.1 , 1.1 ]) # [xstart, xend, ystart, yend]
Section 65.5: Making multiple plots in the same figure by
superimposition similar to MATLAB
In this example, a sine curve and a cosine curve are plotted in the same figure
by superimposing the plots on top of each other.

# Plotting tutorials in Python

# Adding Multiple plots by superimposition
# Good for plots sharing similar x, y limits
# Using single plot command and legend

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = np.linspace(0 , 2.0 *np.pi, 101 )

y = np.sin(x)
z = np.cos(x)

# values for making ticks in x and y axis

xnumbers = np.linspace(0 , 7 , 15 )
ynumbers = np.linspace(1 , 1 , 11 )

plt.plot(x , y, 'r' , x, z, 'g' ) # r, g - red, green colour

plt.xlabel("Angle in Radians" )
plt.ylabel("Magnitude" )
plt.title("Plot of some trigonometric functions" )
plt.xticks(xnumbers)
plt.yticks(ynumbers)
plt.legend(['sine' , 'cosine' ])
plt.grid()
plt.axis([0 , 6.5 , 1.1 , 1.1 ]) # [xstart, xend, ystart, yend] plt.show()
Section 65.6: Making multiple Plots in the same figure using
plot superimposition with separate plot commands

Similar to the previous example, here, a sine and a cosine curve are plotted
on the same figure using separate plot commands. This is more Pythonic and
can be used to get separate handles for each plot.

# Plotting tutorials in Python

# Adding Multiple plots by superimposition
# Good for plots sharing similar x, y limits
# Using multiple plot commands
# Much better and preferred than previous

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x = np.linspace(0 , 2.0 *np.pi, 101 )

y = np.sin(x)
z = np.cos(x)

# values for making ticks in x and y axis

xnumbers = np.linspace(0 , 7 , 15 )
ynumbers = np.linspace(1 , 1 , 11 )

plt.plot(x , y, color= 'r' , label= 'sin' ) # r - red colour

plt.plot(x, z, color= 'g' , label= 'cos' ) # g - green colour
plt.xlabel("Angle in Radians" )
plt.ylabel("Magnitude" )
plt.title("Plot of some trigonometric functions" ) plt.xticks(xnumbers)
plt.yticks(ynumbers)
plt.legend()
plt.grid()
plt.axis([0 , 6.5 , 1.1 , 1.1 ]) # [xstart, xend, ystart, yend] plt.show()
Chapter 66: graph-tool
The python tools can be used to generate graph

Section 66.1: PyDotPlus

PyDotPlus is an improved version of the old pydot project that provides a
Python Interface to Graphviz’s Dot language.
Installation
For the latest stable version:
pip install pydotplus
For the development version:
pip install https://github.com/carlos-jenkins/pydotplus/archive/master.zip
Load graph as defined by a DOT file
The file is assumed to be in DOT format. It will be loaded, parsed and a Dot
class will be returned, representing the graph. For example, a simple
demo.dot:
digraph demo1{ a -> b -> c; c ->a; }

import pydotplus
graph_a = pydotplus.graph_from_dot_file('demo.dot' )
graph_a.write_svg('test.svg' ) # generate graph in svg.

You will get a svg(Scalable Vector Graphics) like this:

Section 66.2: PyGraphviz

Get PyGraphviz from the Python Package Index at
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pygraphviz
or install it with:
pip install pygraphviz
and an attempt will be made to find and install an appropriate version that
matches your operating system and Python version.
You can install the development version (at github.com) with:
pip install git://github.com/pygraphviz/pygraphviz.git#egg=pygraphviz
Get PyGraphviz from the Python Package Index at
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pygraphviz
or install it with:
easy_install pygraphviz
and an attempt will be made to find and install an appropriate version that
matches your operating system and Python version.
Load graph as defined by a DOT file
The file is assumed to be in DOT format. It will be loaded, parsed and a Dot
class will be returned, representing the graph. For example,a simple
demo.dot:
digraph demo1{ a -> b -> c; c ->a; }
Load it and draw it.

import pygraphviz as pgv

G = pgv.AGraph("demo.dot" )
G.draw('test' , format= 'svg' , prog= 'dot' )

You will get a svg(Scalable Vector Graphics) like this:

Chapter 67: Generators

Generators are lazy iterators created by generator functions (using yield ) or
generator expressions (using (an_expression for x in an_iterator)).

Section 67.1: Introduction

Generator expressions are similar to list, dictionary and set comprehensions,
but are enclosed with parentheses. The parentheses do not have to be present
when they are used as the sole argument for a function call.
expression = (x**2 for x in range (10 ))
This example generates the 10 first perfect squares, including 0 (in which x =
0).

Generator functions are similar to regular functions, except that they have
one or more yield statements in their body. Such functions cannot return any
values (however empty return s are allowed if you want to stop the generator
early).

def function():
for x in range (10 ):
yield x**2
This generator function is equivalent to the previous generator expression, it
outputs the same.
Note : all generator expressions have their own equivalent functions, but not
vice versa.
A generator expression can be used without parentheses if both parentheses
would be repeated otherwise:

sum (i for i in range (10 ) if i % 2 == 0 ) #Output: 20

any (x = 0 for x in foo) #Output: True or False depending on foo type (a > b
for a in foo if a % 2 == 1 ) #Output: <class 'generator'>

Instead of:

sum ((i for i in range (10 ) if i % 2 == 0 ))

any ((x = 0 for x in foo))
type ((a > b for a in foo if a % 2 == 1 ))

But not:

fooFunction(i for i in range (10 ) if i % 2 == 0 , foo, bar)

return x = 0 for x in foo
barFunction(baz, a > b for a in foo if a % 2 == 1 )

Calling a generator function produces a generator object , which can later be

iterated over. Unlike other types of iterators, generator objects may only be
traversed once.
g1 = function()
print (g1) # Out: <generator object function at 0x1012e1888>

Notice that a generator's body is not immediately executed: when you call
function() in the example above, it immediately returns a generator object,
without executing even the first print statement. This allows generators to
consume less memory than functions that return a list, and it allows creating
generators that produce infinitely long sequences.
For this reason, generators are often used in data science, and other contexts
involving large amounts of data. Another advantage is that other code can
immediately use the values yielded by a generator, without waiting for the
complete sequence to be produced.

However, if you need to use the values produced by a generator more than
once, and if generating them costs more than storing, it may be better to store
the yielded values as a list than to re-generate the sequence. See 'Resetting a
generator' below for more details.

Typically a generator object is used in a loop, or in any function that requires

an iterable:
for x in g1:
print ("Received" , x)

# Output:
# Received 0
# Received 1
# Received 4
# Received 9
# Received 16 # Received 25 # Received 36 # Received 49 # Received 64 #
Received 81

arr1 = list (g1)

# arr1 = [], because the loop above already consumed all the values. g2 =
function()
arr2 = list (g2) # arr2 = [0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]

Since generator objects are iterators, one can iterate over them manually
using the next () function. Doing so will return the yielded values one by one
on each subsequent invocation.

Under the hood, each time you call next() on a generator, Python executes
statements in the body of the generator function until it hits the next yield
statement. At this point it returns the argument of the yield command, and
remembers the point where that happened. Calling next() once again will
resume execution from that point and continue until the next yield statement.

If Python reaches the end of the generator function without encountering any
more yield s, a StopIteration exception is raised (this is normal, all iterators
behave in the same way).

g3 = function()
a = next(g3) # a becomes 0
b = next(g3) # b becomes 1
c = next(g3) # c becomes 2
...
j = next(g3) # Raises StopIteration, j remains undefined

Note that in Python 2 generator objects had .next() methods that could be
used to iterate through the yielded values manually. In Python 3 this method
was replaced with the .__next__() standard for all iterators.
Resetting a generator
Remember that you can only iterate through the objects generated by a
generator once . If you have already iterated through the objects in a script,
any further attempt do so will yield None .

If you need to use the objects generated by a generator more than once, you
can either define the generator function again and use it a second time, or,
alternatively, you can store the output of the generator function in a list on
first use. Re-defining the generator function will be a good option if you are
dealing with large volumes of data, and storing a list of all data items would
take up a lot of disc space. Conversely, if it is costly to generate the items
initially, you may prefer to store the generated items in a list so that you can
re-use them.

Section 67.2: Infinite sequences

Generators can be used to represent infinite sequences:

def integers_starting_from(n):
while True :
yield n
n += 1

natural_numbers = integers_starting_from(1 )
Infinite sequence of numbers as above can also be generated with the help of
itertools . count. The above code could be written as below
natural_numbers = itertools .count(1 )
You can use generator comprehensions on infinite generators to produce new
generators:
multiples_of_two = (x * 2 for x in natural_numbers) multiples_of_three = (x
for x in natural_numbers if x % 3 == 0 )
Be aware that an infinite generator does not have an end, so passing it to any
function that will attempt to consume the generator entirely will have dire
consequences :
list (multiples_of_two) # will never terminate, or raise an OS-specific error
Instead, use list/set comprehensions with range (or xrange for python < 3.0):
first_five_multiples_of_three = [next(multiples_of_three) for _ in range (5 )]
# [3, 6, 9, 12, 15]
or use itertools . islice() to slice the iterator to a subset:

from itertools import islice

multiples_of_four = (x * 4 for x in integers_starting_from(1 ))
first_five_multiples_of_four = list (islice(multiples_of_four, 5 )) # [4, 8, 12,
16, 20]

Note that the original generator is updated too, just like all other generators
coming from the same "root":

next(natural_numbers) # yields 16
next(multiples_of_two) # yields 34
next(multiples_of_four) # yields 24

An infinite sequence can also be iterated with a for -loop. Make sure to
include a conditional break statement so that the loop would terminate
eventually:

for idx, number in enumerate (multiplies_of_two): print (number)

if idx == 9 :

break # stop after taking the first 10 multiplies of two Classic example -
Fibonacci numbers import itertools

def fibonacci():
a, b = 1 , 1
while True :

yield a
a, b = b, a + b
first_ten_fibs = list (itertools .islice(fibonacci(), 10 )) # [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21,
34, 55]
def nth_fib(n):
return next(itertools .islice(fibonacci(), n - 1 , n)) ninety_nineth_fib =
nth_fib(99 ) # 354224848179261915075

Section 67.3: Sending objects to a generator

In addition to receiving values from a generator, it is possible to send an
object to a generator using the send() method.

def accumulator():
total = 0
value = None
while True :

# receive sent value value = yield total if value is None : break # aggregate
values total += value

generator = accumulator()
# advance until the first "yield" next(generator) # 0

# from this point on, the generator aggregates values generator.send(1 ) # 1

generator.send(10 ) # 11
generator.send(100 ) # 111
# ...

# Calling next(generator) is equivalent to calling generator.send(None)

next(generator) # StopIteration
What happens here is the following:

When you first call next(generator), the program advances to the first yield
statement, and returns the value of total at that point, which is 0. The
execution of the generator suspends at this point. When you then call
generator.send(x), the interpreter takes the argument x and makes it the return
value of the last yield statement, which gets assigned to value. The generator
then proceeds as usual, until it yields the next value.
When you finally call next(generator), the program treats this as if you're
sending None to the generator. There is nothing special about None ,
however, this example uses None as a special value to ask the generator to
stop.

Section 67.4: Yielding all values from another iterable

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.3
Use yield from if you want to yield all values from another iterable:

def foob(x):
yield from range (x * 2 )
yield from range (2 )

list (foob(5 )) # [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, 1]

This works with generators as well.

def fibto(n):
a, b = 1 , 1
while True :

if a >= n: break yield a

a, b = b, a + b

def usefib():
yield from fibto(10 ) yield from fibto(20 )

list (usefib()) # [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13]

Section 67.5: Iteration

A generator object supports the iterator protocol . That is, it provides a next()
method (__next__() in Python 3.x), which is used to step through its
execution, and its __iter__ method returns itself. This means that a generator
can be used in any language construct which supports generic iterable
objects.

# naive partial implementation of the Python 2.x xrange() def xrange (n):
i=0

while i < n:
yield i
i += 1

# looping
for i in xrange (10 ):
print (i) # prints the values 0, 1, ..., 9 # unpacking
a, b, c = xrange (3 ) # 0, 1, 2
# building a list
l = list (xrange (10 )) # [0, 1, ..., 9]

Section 67.6: The next() function

The next () built-in is a convenient wrapper which can be used to receive a

value from any iterator (including a generator iterator) and to provide a
default value in case the iterator is exhausted.

def nums():
yield 1
yield 2
yield 3
generator = nums()
next(generator , None ) # 1
next(generator, None ) # 2
next(generator, None ) # 3
next(generator, None ) # None next(generator, None ) # None # ...

The syntax is next(iterator[, default]). If iterator ends and a default value was
passed, it is returned. If no default was provided, StopIteration is raised.

Section 67.7: Coroutines

Generators can be used to implement coroutines:

# create and advance generator to the first yield def coroutine(func):
def start(*args, **kwargs):

cr = func(*args, **kwargs)
next(cr)
return cr

return start

# example coroutine @ coroutine

def adder(sum = 0 ):

while True :
x = yield sum sum += x

# example use s = adder() s.send(1 ) # 1 s.send(2 ) # 3

Coroutines are commonly used to implement state machines, as they are

primarily useful for creating singlemethod procedures that require a state to
function properly. They operate on an existing state and return the value
obtained on completion of the operation.

Section 67.8: Refactoring list-building code

Suppose you have complex code that creates and returns a list by starting
with a blank list and repeatedly appending to it:
def create():
result = []
# logic here...
result.append(value) # possibly in several places
# more logic...
return result # possibly in several places

values = create()
When it's not practical to replace the inner logic with a list comprehension,
you can turn the entire function into a generator in-place, and then collect the
results:

def create_gen():
# logic...
yield value
# more logic
return # not needed if at the end of the function, of course

values = list (create_gen())

If the logic is recursive, use yield from to include all the values from the
recursive call in a "flattened" result:

def preorder_traversal(node):
yield node.value
for child in node.children:

yield from preorder_traversal(child)

Section 67.9: Yield with recursion: recursively listing all files in

a directory
First, import the libraries that work with files:
from os import listdir
from os .path import isfile, join, exists
A helper function to read only files from a directory:

def get_files(path):
for file in listdir(path): full_path = join(path, file ) if isfile(full_path):
if exists(full_path): yield full_path
Another helper function to get only the subdirectories:

def get_directories(path):
for directory in listdir(path): full_path = join(path, directory) if not
isfile(full_path):

if exists(full_path): yield full_path

Now use these functions to recursively get all files within a directory and all
its subdirectories (using generators):
def get_files_recursive(directory):
for file in get_files(directory):
yield file
for subdirectory in get_directories(directory):
for file in get_files_recursive(subdirectory): # here the recursive call yield file
This function can be simplified using yield from :

def get_files_recursive(directory):
yield from get_files(directory)
for subdirectory in get_directories(directory):

yield from get_files_recursive(subdirectory)

Section 67.10: Generator expressions

It's possible to create generator iterators using a comprehension-like syntax.
generator = (i * 2 for i in range (3 ))

next(generator) # 0
next(generator) # 2
next(generator) # 4
next(generator) # raises StopIteration

If a function doesn't necessarily need to be passed a list, you can save on

characters (and improve readability) by placing a generator expression inside
a function call. The parenthesis from the function call implicitly make your
expression a generator expression.
sum (i ** 2 for i in range (4 )) # 0^2 + 1^2 + 2^2 + 3^2 = 0 + 1 + 4 + 9 = 14
Additionally, you will save on memory because instead of loading the entire
list you are iterating over ([ 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 ] in the above example), the generator
allows Python to use values as needed.

Section 67.11: Using a generator to find Fibonacci Numbers

A practical use case of a generator is to iterate through values of an infinite
series. Here's an example of finding the first ten terms of the Fibonacci
Sequence .

def fib(a= 0 , b= 1 ):
"""Generator that yields Fibonacci numbers. `a` and `b` are the seed
values""" while True :

yield a
a, b = b, a + b
f = fib()
print (', ' .join(str (next(f)) for _ in range (10 ))) 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34

Section 67.12: Searching

The next function is useful even without iterating. Passing a generator
expression to next is a quick way to search for the first occurrence of an
element matching some predicate. Procedural code like
def find_and_transform(sequence, predicate, func):
for element in sequence:
if predicate(element):
return func(element)
raise ValueError
item = find_and_transform(my_sequence, my_predicate, my_func)
can be replaced with:

item = next(my_func(x) for x in my_sequence if my_predicate(x)) #

StopIteration will be raised if there are no matches; this exception can # be
caught and transformed, if desired.
For this purpose, it may be desirable to create an alias, such as first = next, or
a wrapper function to convert the exception:
def first(generator): try :
return next(generator) except StopIteration : raise ValueError

Section 67.13: Iterating over generators in parallel

To iterate over several generators in parallel, use the zip builtin:
for x, y in zip (a, b):
print (x, y)
Results in:

1x
2y
3z

In python 2 you should use itertools .izip instead. Here we can also see that
the all the zip functions yield tuples.
Note that zip will stop iterating as soon as one of the iterables runs out of
items. If you'd like to iterate for as long as the longest iterable, use itertools
.zip_longest().

Chapter 68: Reduce

Parameter function
iterable

Details
function that is used for reducing the iterable (must take two arguments).
(positional-only ) iterable that's going to be reduced. (positional-only )

initializer start-value of the reduction. (optional , positional-only )

Section 68.1: Overview

# No import needed
# No import required...
from functools import reduce # ... but it can be loaded from the functools
module
from functools import reduce # mandatory
reduce reduces an iterable by applying a function repeatedly on the next
element of an iterable and the cumulative result so far.
def add(s1, s2): return s1 + s2
asequence = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
reduce (add, asequence) # equivalent to: add(add(1,2),3) # Out: 6
In this example, we defined our own add function. However, Python comes
with a standard equivalent function in the operator module:

import operator
reduce (operator .add, asequence) # Out: 6

reduce can also be passed a starting value:

reduce (add, asequence, 10 ) # Out: 16

Section 68.2: Using reduce

def multiply(s1, s2):

print ('{arg1} * {arg2} = {res}' .format(arg1= s1, arg2= s2, res= s1*s2))

return s1 * s2
asequence = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
Given an initializer the function is started by applying it to the initializer and
the first iterable element:

cumprod = reduce (multiply, asequence, 5 ) # Out: 5 * 1 = 5

# 5 * 2 = 10 # 10 * 3 = 30 print (cumprod)
# Out: 30

Without initializer parameter the reduce starts by applying the function to the
first two list elements:

cumprod = reduce (multiply, asequence) # Out: 1 * 2 = 2

#2*3=6
print (cumprod)
# Out: 6
Section 68.3: Cumulative product

import operator
reduce (operator .mul, [10 , 5 , 3 ])
# Out: -150

Section 68.4: Non short-circuit variant of any/all

reduce will not terminate the iteration before the iterable has been completely
iterated over so it can be used to create a non short-circuit any () or all ()
function:

import operator
# non short-circuit "all"
reduce (operator .and_, [False , True , True , True ]) # = False

# non short-circuit "any"

reduce (operator .or_, [True , False , False , False ]) # = True

Chapter 69: Map Function

Parameter function
iterable

Details
function for mapping (must take as many parameters as there are iterables)
(positional-only ) the function is applied to each element of the iterable
(positional-only )

*additional_iterablessee iterable, but as many as you like (optional ,

positional-only )

Section 69.1: Basic use of map, itertools.imap and

future_builtins.map

The map function is the simplest one among Python built-ins used for
functional programming. map () applies a specified function to each element
in an iterable:
names = ['Fred' , 'Wilma' , 'Barney' ]

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

map (len , names) # map in Python 3.x is a class; its instances are iterable #
Out: <map object at 0x00000198B32E2CF8>

A Python 3-compatible map is included in the future_builtins module:

Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.6

from future_builtins import map # contains a Python 3.x compatible map()

map (len , names) # see below
# Out: <itertools.imap instance at 0x3eb0a20>

Alternatively, in Python 2 one can use imap from itertools to get a generator
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.3
map (len , names) # map() returns a list # Out: [4, 5, 6]

from itertools import imap

imap(len , names) # itertools.imap() returns a generator # Out:
<itertools.imap at 0x405ea20>

The result can be explicitly converted to a list to remove the differences

between Python 2 and 3:
list (map (len , names)) # Out: [4, 5, 6]
map () can be replaced by an equivalent list comprehension or generator
expression :
[len (item) for item in names] # equivalent to Python 2.x map() # Out: [4, 5,
6]
(len (item) for item in names) # equivalent to Python 3.x map() # Out:
<generator object <genexpr> at 0x00000195888D5FC0>

Section 69.2: Mapping each value in an iterable

For example, you can take the absolute value of each element:
list (map (abs , (1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 3 ))) # the call to `list` is unnecessary in 2.x # Out:
[1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3]
Anonymous function also support for mapping a list:
map (lambda x:x*2 , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]) # Out: [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
or converting decimal values to percentages:
def to_percent(num): return num * 100
list (map (to_percent, [0.95 , 0.75 , 1.01 , 0.1 ])) # Out: [95.0, 75.0, 101.0, 10.0]
or converting dollars to euros (given an exchange rate):
from functools import partial from operator import mul

rate = 0.9 # fictitious exchange rate, 1 dollar = 0.9 euros dollars =

{'under_my_bed' : 1000 ,
'jeans' : 45 ,
'bank' : 5000 }

sum (map (partial(mul, rate), dollars.values())) # Out: 5440.5

functools.partial is a convenient way to fix parameters of functions so that
they can be used with map instead of using lambda or creating customized
functions.

Section 69.3: Mapping values of di ☐ erent iterables

For example calculating the average of each i-th element of multiple
iterables:
def average(*args):
return float (sum (args)) / len (args) # cast to float - only mandatory for
python 2.x

measurement1 = [100 , 111 , 99 , 97 ]

measurement2 = [102 , 117 , 91 , 102 ]
measurement3 = [104 , 102 , 95 , 101 ]

list (map (average, measurement1, measurement2, measurement3))

# Out: [102.0, 110.0, 95.0, 100.0]
There are different requirements if more than one iterable is passed to map
depending on the version of python:
The function must take as many parameters as there are iterables:
def median_of_three(a, b, c): return sorted ((a, b, c))[1 ]
list (map (median_of_three, measurement1, measurement2))
TypeError: median_of_three() missing 1 required positional argument: 'c'
list (map (median_of_three, measurement1, measurement2, measurement3,
measurement3))
TypeError: median_of_three() takes 3 positional arguments but 4 were given
Python 2.xVersion ≥ 2.0.1
map : The mapping iterates as long as one iterable is still not fully consumed
but assumes None from the fully consumed iterables:
import operator
measurement1 = [100 , 111 , 99 , 97 ] measurement2 = [102 , 117 ]
# Calculate difference between elements
list (map (operator .sub, measurement1, measurement2))
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'int' and 'NoneType'
itertools .imap and future_builtins.map : The mapping stops as soon as one
iterable stops:
import operator
from itertools import imap
measurement1 = [100 , 111 , 99 , 97 ] measurement2 = [102 , 117 ]

# Calculate difference between elements

list (imap(operator .sub, measurement1, measurement2)) # Out: [-2, -6]
list (imap(operator .sub, measurement2, measurement1)) # Out: [2, 6]

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0.0

The mapping stops as soon as one iterable stops:
import operator
measurement1 = [100 , 111 , 99 , 97 ] measurement2 = [102 , 117 ]

# Calculate difference between elements

list (map (operator .sub, measurement1, measurement2)) # Out: [-2, -6]
list (map (operator .sub, measurement2, measurement1)) # Out: [2, 6]

Section 69.4: Transposing with Map: Using "None" as function

argument (python 2.x only)
from itertools import imap
from future_builtins import map as fmap # Different name to highlight
differences
image = [[1 , 2 , 3 ], [4 , 5 , 6 ], [7 , 8 , 9 ]]

list (map (None , *image))

# Out: [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)] list (fmap(None , *image))
# Out: [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)] list (imap(None , *image))
# Out: [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, 6, 9)]

image2 = [[1 , 2 , 3 ],
[4 , 5 ],
[7 , 8 , 9 ]]

list (map (None , *image2))

# Out: [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8), (3, None, 9)] # Fill missing values with None list
(fmap(None , *image2))
# Out: [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8)] # ignore columns with missing values list
(imap(None , *image2))
# Out: [(1, 4, 7), (2, 5, 8)] # dito

Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0.0

list (map (None , *image))
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable
But there is a workaround to have similar results:
def conv_to_list(*args): return list (args)
list (map (conv_to_list, *image))
# Out: [[1, 4, 7], [2, 5, 8], [3, 6, 9]]

Section 69.5: Series and Parallel Mapping

map() is a built-in function, which means that it is available everywhere

without the need to use an 'import' statement. It is available everywhere just
like print() If you look at Example 5 you will see that I had to use an import
statement before I could use pretty print (import pprint). Thus pprint is not a
built-in function

Series mapping
In this case each argument of the iterable is supplied as argument to the
mapping function in ascending order. This arises when we have just one
iterable to map and the mapping function requires a single argument.
Example 1

insects = ['fly' , 'ant' , 'beetle' , 'cankerworm' ]

f = lambda x: x + ' is an insect'
print (list (map (f, insects))) # the function defined by f is executed on each
item of the iterable insects

results in
['fly is an insect' , 'ant is an insect' , 'beetle is an insect' , 'cankerworm is an insect'
]
Example 2
print (list (map (len , insects))) # the len function is executed each item in the
insect list
results in
[ 3 , 3 , 6 , 10 ]
Parallel mapping
In this case each argument of the mapping function is pulled from across all
iterables (one from each iterable) in parallel. Thus the number of iterables
supplied must match the number of arguments required by the function.

carnivores = ['lion' , 'tiger' , 'leopard' , 'arctic fox' ] herbivores = ['african buffalo'

'moose' , 'okapi' , 'parakeet' ] omnivores = ['chicken' , 'dove' , 'mouse' , 'pig' ]

def animals(w, x, y, z):

return '{0}, {1}, {2}, and {3} ARE ALL ANIMALS' .format(w.title(), x, y,
z)
Example 3

# Too many arguments

# observe here that map is trying to pass one item each from each of the four
iterables to len. This leads len to complain that
# it is being fed too many arguments
print (list (map (len , insects, carnivores, herbivores, omnivores)))

results in
TypeError : len () takes exactly one argument (4 given)
Example 4
# Too few arguments
# observe here that map is supposed to execute animal on individual elements
of insects one-by-one. But animals complain when
# it only gets one argument, whereas it was expecting four.
print (list (map (animals, insects)))

results in
TypeError : animals() missing 3 required positional arguments: 'x' , 'y' , and 'z'
Example 5

# here map supplies w, x, y, z with one value from across the list import pprint
pprint .pprint (list (map (animals, insects, carnivores, herbivores,
omnivores)))

results in

[ 'Fly, lion, african buffalo, and chicken ARE ALL ANIMALS' , 'Ant, tiger,
moose, and dove ARE ALL ANIMALS' ,
'Beetle, leopard, okapi, and mouse ARE ALL ANIMALS' , 'Cankerworm,
arctic fox, parakeet, and pig ARE ALL ANIMALS' ]

Chapter 70: Exponentiation

Section 70.1: Exponentiation using builtins: ** and pow()

Exponentiation can be used by using the builtin pow -function or the **

operator:
2 ** 3 # 8
pow (2 , 3 ) # 8
For most (all in Python 2.x) arithmetic operations the result's type will be that
of the wider operand. This is not true for **; the following cases are
exceptions from this rule:
Base: int , exponent: int < 0 :
2 ** 3
# Out: 0.125 (result is a float)
This is also valid for Python 3.x.
Before Python 2.2.0, this raised a ValueError .
Base: int < 0 or float < 0 , exponent: float != int
(2 ) ** (0.5 ) # also (-2.) ** (0.5)
# Out: (8.659560562354934e-17+1.4142135623730951j) (result is complex)
Before python 3.0.0, this raised a ValueError .
The operator module contains two functions that are equivalent to the **-
operator:

import operator
operator .pow (4 , 2 ) # 16
operator .__pow__ (4 , 3 ) # 64

or one could directly call the __pow__ method:

val1 , val2 = 4 , 2
val1.__pow__ (val2) # 16
val2.__rpow__ (val1) # 16
# in-place power operation isn't supported by immutable classes like int,
float, complex: # val1.__ipow__(val2)

Section 70.2: Square root: math.sqrt() and cmath.sqrt

The math module contains the math .sqrt()-function that can compute the
square root of any number (that can be converted to a float ) and the result
will always be a float :
import math

math .sqrt(9 ) # 3.0

math .sqrt(11.11 ) # 3.3331666624997918
math .sqrt(Decimal('6.25' )) # 2.5

The math .sqrt() function raises a ValueError if the result would be complex :
math .sqrt(10 )
ValueError: math domain error

math .sqrt(x) is faster than math .pow (x, 0.5 ) or x ** 0.5 but the precision of
the results is the same. The cmath module is extremely similar to the math
module, except for the fact it can compute complex numbers and all of its
results are in the form of a + bi. It can also use .sqrt():
import cmath
cmath .sqrt(4 ) # 2+0j cmath .sqrt(4 ) # 2j

What's with the j? j is the equivalent to the square root of -1. All numbers can
be put into the form a + bi, or in this case, a + bj. a is the real part of the
number like the 2 in 2 +0j. Since it has no imaginary part, b is 0. b represents
part of the imaginary part of the number like the 2 in 2j. Since there is no real
part in this, 2j can also be written as 0 + 2j.

Section 70.3: Modular exponentiation: pow() with 3 arguments

Supplying pow () with 3 arguments pow (a, b, c) evaluates the modular

exponentiation ab mod c :
pow (3 , 4 , 17 ) # 13
# equivalent unoptimized expression:
3 ** 4 % 17 # 13

# steps:
3 ** 4 # 81
81 % 17 # 13

For built-in types using modular exponentiation is only possible if:

First argument is an int

Second argument is an int >= 0 Third argument is an int != 0

These restrictions are also present in python 3.x

For example one can use the 3-argument form of pow to define a modular
inverse function:

def modular_inverse(x, p):

"""Find a such as a·x ≡ 1 (mod p), assuming p is prime.""" return pow (x, p2
p)

[modular_inverse(x, 13 ) for x in range (1 , 13 )] # Out: [1, 7, 9, 10, 8, 11, 2, 5,

3, 4, 6, 12]

Section 70.4: Computing large integer roots

Even though Python natively supports big integers, taking the nth root of very
large numbers can fail in Python.
x = 2 ** 100
cube = x ** 3
root = cube ** (1.0 / 3 ) OverflowError: long int too large to convert to float
When dealing with such large integers, you will need to use a custom
function to compute the nth root of a number.

def nth_root(x, n):

# Start with some reasonable bounds around the nth root. upper_bound = 1
while upper_bound ** n <= x:

upper_bound * = 2
lower_bound = upper_bound // 2
# Keep searching for a better result as long as the bounds make sense. while
lower_bound < upper_bound:

mid = (lower_bound + upper_bound) // 2

mid_nth = mid ** n
if lower_bound < mid and mid_nth < x:

lower_bound = mid
elif upper_bound > mid and mid_nth > x:
upper_bound = mid
else :
# Found perfect nth root.
return mid
return mid + 1

x = 2 ** 100
cube = x ** 3
root = nth_root(cube, 3 ) x == root
# True

Section 70.5: Exponentiation using the math module:

math.pow()
The math -module contains another math .pow () function. The difference to
the builtin pow ()-function or ** operator is that the result is always a float :

import math
math .pow (2 , 2 ) # 4.0
math .pow (2 ., 2 ) # 4.0

Which excludes computations with complex inputs:

math .pow (2 , 2 +0j)
TypeError: can't convert complex to float
and computations that would lead to complex results:
math .pow (2 , 0.5 ) ValueError: math domain error

Section 70.6: Exponential function: math.exp() and cmath.exp()

Both the math and cmath -module contain the Euler number: e and using it
with the builtin pow ()-function or **- operator works mostly like math
.exp():
import math
math .e ** 2 # 7.3890560989306495 math .exp(2 ) # 7.38905609893065

import cmath
cmath .e ** 2 # 7.3890560989306495 cmath .exp(2 ) #
(7.38905609893065+0j)

However the result is different and using the exponential function directly is
more reliable than builtin exponentiation with base math .e:

print (math .e ** 10 ) # 22026.465794806703

print (math .exp(10 )) # 22026.465794806718
print (cmath .exp(10 ).real) # 22026.465794806718
# difference starts here ---------------^

Section 70.7: Exponential function minus 1: math.expm1()

The math module contains the expm1()-function that can compute the
expression math .e ** x - 1 for very small x with higher precision than math
.exp(x) or cmath .exp(x) would allow:
import math

print (math .e ** 1e-3 - 1 ) # 0.0010005001667083846

print (math .exp(1e-3 ) - 1 ) # 0.0010005001667083846
print (math .expm1(1e-3 )) # 0.0010005001667083417
# ------------------^

For very small x the difference gets bigger:

print (math .e ** 1e-15 - 1 ) # 1.1102230246251565e-15

print (math .exp(1e-15 ) - 1 ) # 1.1102230246251565e-15
print (math .expm1(1e-15 )) # 1.0000000000000007e-15
# ^------------------

The improvement is significant in scientific computing. For example the

Planck's law contains an exponential function minus 1:

def planks_law(lambda_, T):

from scipy.constants import h, k, c # If no scipy installed hardcode these!
return 2 * h * c ** 2 / (lambda_ ** 5 * math .expm1(h * c / (lambda_ * k *
T)))

def planks_law_naive(lambda_, T):

from scipy.constants import h, k, c # If no scipy installed hardcode these!
return 2 * h * c ** 2 / (lambda_ ** 5 * (math .e ** (h * c / (lambda_ * k * T))
- 1 ))

planks_law( 100 , 5000 ) # 4.139080074896474e-19

planks_law_naive(100 , 5000 ) # 4.139080073488451e-19
# ^--------- planks_law(1000 , 5000 ) # 4.139080128493406e-23
planks_law_naive(1000 , 5000 ) # 4.139080233183142e-23
# ^-----------

Section 70.8: Magic methods and exponentiation: builtin, math

and cmath
Supposing you have a class that stores purely integer values:
class Integer(object ):
def __init__ (self , value):
self .value = int (value) # Cast to an integer
def __repr__ (self ):
return '{cls}({val})' .format(cls= self .__class__.__name__,
val= self .value)

def __pow__ (self , other, modulo= None ):

if modulo is None :
print ('Using __pow__' )
return self .__class__(self .value ** other)

else :
print ('Using __pow__ with modulo' )
return self .__class__(pow (self .value, other, modulo))

def __float__ (self ):

print ('Using __float__' ) return float (self .value)

def __complex__(self ):
print ('Using __complex__' ) return complex (self .value, 0 )

Using the builtin pow function or ** operator always calls __pow__ :

Integer( 2 ) ** 2
# Prints: Using __pow__ Integer(2 ) ** 2.5
# Prints: Using __pow__ pow (Integer(2 ), 0.5 )
# Prints: Using __pow__ operator .pow (Integer(2 ), 3 ) # Prints: Using
__pow__ # Integer(4)

# Integer(5)
# Integer(1)
# Integer(8)
operator .__pow__ (Integer(3 ), 3 ) # Integer(27) # Prints: Using __pow__
The second argument of the __pow__ () method can only be supplied by
using the builtinpow () or by directly calling the method:

pow (Integer(2 ), 3 , 4 ) # Integer(0) # Prints: Using __pow__ with modulo

Integer(2 ).__pow__ (3 , 4 ) # Integer(0) # Prints: Using __pow__ with
modulo

While the math -functions always convert it to a float and use the float-
computation:

import math math .pow (Integer(2 ), 0.5 ) # 1.4142135623730951 # Prints:

Using __float__

cmath -functions try to convert it to complex but can also fallback to float if
there is no explicit conversion to complex :
import cmath
cmath .exp(Integer(2 )) # (7.38905609893065+0j) # Prints: Using
__complex__
del Integer.__complex__ # Deleting __complex__ method - instances cannot
be cast to complex
cmath .exp(Integer(2 )) # (7.38905609893065+0j) # Prints: Using __float__
Neither math nor cmath will work if also the __float__ ()-method is missing:
del Integer.__float__ # Deleting __complex__ method
math .sqrt(Integer(2 )) # also cmath.exp(Integer(2)) TypeError: a float is
required

Section 70.9: Roots: nth-root with fractional exponents

While the math .sqrt function is provided for the specific case of square roots,
it's often convenient to use the exponentiation operator (**) with fractional
exponents to perform nth-root operations, like cube roots.
The inverse of an exponentiation is exponentiation by the exponent's
reciprocal. So, if you can cube a number by putting it to the exponent of 3,
you can find the cube root of a number by putting it to the exponent of 1/3.

>>> x = 3
>>> y = x ** 3
>>> y
27
>>> z = y ** (1.0 / 3 )
>>> z
3.0
>>> z == x
True

Chapter 71: Searching

Section 71.1: Searching for an element

All built-in collections in Python implement a way to check element

membership using in.
List

alist = [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]
5 in alist # True
10 in alist # False

Tuple

atuple = ('0' , '1' , '2' , '3' , '4' )

4 in atuple # False
'4' in atuple # True

String

astring = 'i am a string'

'a' in astring # True
'am' in astring # True
'I' in astring # False

Set

aset = {(10 , 10 ), (20 , 20 ), (30 , 30 )}

(10 , 10 ) in aset # True
10 in aset # False

Dict
dict is a bit special: the normal in only checks the keys . If you want to search
in values you need to specify it. The same if you want to search for key-value
pairs.

adict = {0 : 'a' , 1 : 'b' , 2 : 'c' , 3 : 'd' }

1 in adict # True - implicitly searches in keys 'a' in adict # False
2 in adict.keys() # True - explicitly searches in keys 'a' in adict.values() # True -
explicitly searches in values (0 , 'a' ) in adict.items() # True - explicitly
searches key/value pairs

Section 71.2: Searching in custom classes: __contains__ and

__iter__
To allow the use of in for custom classes the class must either provide the
magic method __contains__ or, failing that, an __iter__ -method.
Suppose you have a class containing a list of list s:

class ListList:
def __init__ (self , value):
self .value = value

# Create a set of all values for fast access

self .setofvalues = set (item for sublist in self .value for item in sublist)

def __iter__ (self ):

print ('Using __iter__.' )
# A generator over all sublist elements
return (item for sublist in self .value for item in sublist)

def __contains__ (self , value):

print ('Using __contains__.' )
# Just lookup if the value is in the set return value in self .setofvalues

# Even without the set you could use the iter method for the contains-check: #
return any(item == value for item in iter(self))
Using membership testing is possible using in:

a = ListList([[1 , 1 , 1 ], [0 , 1 , 1 ], [1 , 5 , 1 ]]) 10 in a # False

# Prints: Using __contains__.
5 in a # True
# Prints: Using __contains__.

even after deleting the __contains__ method:

del ListList.__contains__ 5 in a # True

# Prints: Using __iter__.

Note: The looping in (as in for i in a) will always use __iter__ even if the
class implements a __contains__ method.

Section 71.3: Getting the index for strings: str.index(),

str.rindex() and str.find(), str.rfind()
String also have an index method but also more advanced options and the
additional str .find. For both of these there is a complementary reversed
method.

astring = 'Hello on StackOverflow' astring.index('o' ) # 4

astring.rindex('o' ) # 20

astring.find('o' ) # 4 astring.rfind('o' ) # 20
The difference between index/rindex and find/rfind is what happens if the
substring is not found in the string:
astring.index('q' ) # ValueError: substring not found astring.find('q' ) # -1
All of these methods allow a start and end index:

astring.index( 'o' , 5 ) # 6
astring.index('o' , 6 ) # 6 - start is inclusive astring.index('o' , 5 , 7 ) # 6
astring.index('o' , 5 , 6 ) # - end is not inclusive

ValueError: substring not found

astring.rindex('o' , 20 ) # 20
astring.rindex('o' , 19 ) # 20 - still from left to right astring.rindex('o' , 4 , 7 ) # 6

Section 71.4: Getting the index list and tuples: list.index(),

tuple.index()
list and tuple have an index-method to get the position of the element:

alist = [10 , 16 , 26 , 5 , 2 , 19 , 105 , 26 ] # search for 16 in the list

alist.index(16 ) # 1
alist[1 ] # 16

alist.index(15 )
ValueError: 15 is not in list
But only returns the position of the first found element:

atuple = (10 , 16 , 26 , 5 , 2 , 19 , 105 , 26 ) atuple.index(26 ) # 2

atuple[2 ] # 26
atuple[7 ] # 26 - is also 26!

Section 71.5: Searching key(s) for a value in dict

dict have no builtin method for searching a value or key because dictionaries
are unordered. You can create a function that gets the key (or keys) for a
specified value:

def getKeysForValue(dictionary, value): foundkeys = []

for keys in dictionary:

if dictionary[key] == value: foundkeys.append(key) return foundkeys

This could also be written as an equivalent list comprehension:
def getKeysForValueComp(dictionary, value):
return [key for key in dictionary if dictionary[key] == value]
If you only care about one found key:
def getOneKeyForValue(dictionary, value):
return next(key for key in dictionary if dictionary[key] == value)
The first two functions will return a list of all keys that have the specified
value:

adict = {'a' : 10 , 'b' : 20 , 'c' : 10 }

getKeysForValue(adict, 10 ) # ['c', 'a'] - order is random could as well be ['a',
'c'] getKeysForValueComp(adict, 10 ) # ['c', 'a'] - dito
getKeysForValueComp(adict, 20 ) # ['b']
getKeysForValueComp(adict, 25 ) # []
The other one will only return one key:
getOneKeyForValue(adict, 10 ) # 'c' - depending on the circumstances this
could also be 'a' getOneKeyForValue(adict, 20 ) # 'b'
and raise a StopIteration -Exception if the value is not in the dict :
getOneKeyForValue(adict, 25 ) StopIteration

Section 71.6: Getting the index for sorted sequences:

bisect.bisect_left()
Sorted sequences allow the use of faster searching algorithms: bisect
.bisect_left()1 :
import bisect

def index_sorted(sorted_seq, value):

"""Locate the leftmost value exactly equal to x or raise a ValueError""" i =
bisect .bisect_left(sorted_seq, value)
if i != len (sorted_seq) and sorted_seq[i] == value:

return i
raise ValueError

alist = [i for i in range (1 , 100000 , 3 )] # Sorted list from 1 to 100000 with step
3 index_sorted(alist, 97285 ) # 32428
index_sorted(alist, 4 ) # 1
index_sorted(alist, 97286 )

ValueError
For very large sorted sequences the speed gain can be quite high. In case for
the first search approximately 500 times as fast:

% timeit index_sorted(alist, 97285 ) # 100000 loops, best of 3: 3 µ s per loop

%timeit alist.index(97285 )
# 1000 loops, best of 3: 1.58 ms per loop

While it's a bit slower if the element is one of the very first:

% timeit index_sorted(alist, 4 )
# 100000 loops, best of 3: 2.98 µ s per loop %timeit alist.index(4 )
# 1000000 loops, best of 3: 580 ns per loop

Section 71.7: Searching nested sequences

Searching in nested sequences like a list of tuple requires an approach like

searching the keys for values in dict but needs customized functions.
The index of the outermost sequence if the value was found in the sequence:

def outer_index(nested_sequence, value):

return next(index for index, inner in enumerate (nested_sequence) for item
in inner
if item == value)

alist_of_tuples = [(4 , 5 , 6 ), (3 , 1 , 'a' ), (7 , 0 , 4.3 )] outer_index(alist_of_tuples

)#1
outer_index(alist_of_tuples, 4.3 ) # 2

or the index of the outer and inner sequence:

def outer_inner_index(nested_sequence, value):

return next((oindex, iindex) for oindex, inner in enumerate
(nested_sequence) for iindex, item in enumerate (inner) if item == value)

outer_inner_index(alist_of_tuples, 'a' ) # (1, 2) alist_of_tuples[1 ][2 ] # 'a'

outer_inner_index(alist_of_tuples, 7 ) # (2, 0) alist_of_tuples[2 ][0 ] # 7
In general (not always ) using next and a generator expression with
conditions to find the first occurrence of the searched value is the most
efficient approach.

Chapter 72: Sorting, Minimum and Maximum

Section 72.1: Make custom classes orderable

min , max , and sorted all need the objects to be orderable. To be properly
orderable, the class needs to define all of the 6 methods __lt__ , __gt__ ,
__ge__ , __le__ , __ne__ and __eq__ :
class IntegerContainer(object ):
def __init__ (self , value):
self .value = value

def __repr__ (self ):

return "{}({})" .format(self .__class__.__name__, self .value)

def __lt__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test less than {!r}' .format(self , other))
return self .value < other.value

def __le__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test less than or equal to {!r}' .format(self , other))
return self .value <= other.value

def __gt__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test greater than {!r}' .format(self , other))
return self .value > other.value

def __ge__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test greater than or equal to {!r}' .format(self , other)) return
self .value >= other.value

def __eq__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test equal to {!r}' .format(self , other))
return self .value == other.value

def __ne__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test not equal to {!r}' .format(self , other))
return self .value != other.value

Though implementing all these methods would seem unnecessary, omitting

some of them will make your code prone to bugs .
Examples:
alist = [IntegerContainer(5 ), IntegerContainer(3 ), IntegerContainer(10 ),
IntegerContainer(7 ) ]

res = max (alist)

# Out: IntegerContainer(3) - Test greater than IntegerContainer(5) #
IntegerContainer(10) - Test greater than IntegerContainer(5) #
IntegerContainer(7) - Test greater than IntegerContainer(10) print (res)
# Out: IntegerContainer(10)

res = min (alist)

# Out: IntegerContainer(3) - Test less than IntegerContainer(5) #
IntegerContainer(10) - Test less than IntegerContainer(3) #
IntegerContainer(7) - Test less than IntegerContainer(3) print (res)
# Out: IntegerContainer(3)

res = sorted (alist)

# Out: IntegerContainer(3) - Test less than IntegerContainer(5)
# IntegerContainer(10) - Test less than IntegerContainer(3)
# IntegerContainer(10) - Test less than IntegerContainer(5)
# IntegerContainer(7) - Test less than IntegerContainer(5)
# IntegerContainer(7) - Test less than IntegerContainer(10)
print (res)
# Out: [IntegerContainer(3), IntegerContainer(5), IntegerContainer(7),
IntegerContainer(10)]

sorted with reverse= True also uses __lt__ :

res = sorted (alist, reverse= True )

# Out: IntegerContainer(10) - Test less than IntegerContainer(7)
# IntegerContainer(3) - Test less than IntegerContainer(10)
# IntegerContainer(3) - Test less than IntegerContainer(10)
# IntegerContainer(3) - Test less than IntegerContainer(7)
# IntegerContainer(5) - Test less than IntegerContainer(7)
# IntegerContainer(5) - Test less than IntegerContainer(3)
print (res)
# Out: [IntegerContainer(10), IntegerContainer(7), IntegerContainer(5),
IntegerContainer(3)]

But sorted can use __gt__ instead if the default is not implemented:
del IntegerContainer.__lt__ # The IntegerContainer no longer implements
"less than"
res = min (alist)
# Out: IntegerContainer(5) - Test greater than IntegerContainer(3) #
IntegerContainer(3) - Test greater than IntegerContainer(10) #
IntegerContainer(3) - Test greater than IntegerContainer(7) print (res)
# Out: IntegerContainer(3)

Sorting methods will raise a TypeError if neither __lt__ nor __gt__ are
implemented:
del IntegerContainer.__gt__ # The IntegerContainer no longer implements
"greater then"
res = min (alist)
TypeError: unorderable types: IntegerContainer() < IntegerContainer()

functools. total_ordering decorator can be used simplifying the effort of

writing these rich comparison methods. If you decorate your class with
total_ordering, you need to implement __eq__ , __ne__ and only one of the
__lt__ , __le__ , __ge__ or __gt__ , and the decorator will fill in the rest:

import functools
@ functools.total_ordering class IntegerContainer(object ): def __init__ (self ,
value): self .value = value
def __repr__ (self ):
return "{}({})" .format(self .__class__.__name__, self .value) def __lt__ (self
other):
print ('{!r} - Test less than {!r}' .format(self , other)) return self .value <
other.value

def __eq__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test equal to {!r}' .format(self , other)) return self .value ==
other.value

def __ne__ (self , other):

print ('{!r} - Test not equal to {!r}' .format(self , other)) return self .value !=
other.value

IntegerContainer( 5 ) > IntegerContainer(6 )

# Output: IntegerContainer(5) - Test less than IntegerContainer(6) #
Returns: False
IntegerContainer( 6 ) > IntegerContainer(5 )
# Output: IntegerContainer(6) - Test less than IntegerContainer(5) # Output:
IntegerContainer(6) - Test equal to IntegerContainer(5) # Returns True

Notice how the > (greater than ) now ends up calling the less than method,
and in some cases even the __eq__ method. This also means that if speed is
of great importance, you should implement each rich comparison method
yourself.

Section 72.2: Special case: dictionaries

Getting the minimum or maximum or using sorted depends on iterations over

the object. In the case of dict , the iteration is only over the keys:

adict = {'a' : 3 , 'b' : 5 , 'c' : 1 }

min (adict)
# Output: 'a'
max (adict)
# Output: 'c'
sorted (adict)
# Output: ['a', 'b', 'c']

To keep the dictionary structure, you have to iterate over the .items():

min (adict.items())
# Output: ('a', 3)
max (adict.items())
# Output: ('c', 1)
sorted (adict.items())
# Output: [('a', 3), ('b', 5), ('c', 1)]

For sorted , you could create an OrderedDict to keep the sorting while having
a dict -like structure:

from collections import OrderedDict

OrderedDict(sorted (adict.items()))
# Output: OrderedDict([('a', 3), ('b', 5), ('c', 1)]) res = OrderedDict(sorted
(adict.items()))
res['a' ]
# Output: 3

By value
Again this is possible using the key argument:

min (adict.items(), key= lambda x: x[1 ])

# Output: ('c', 1)
max (adict.items(), key= operator .itemgetter(1 ))
# Output: ('b', 5)
sorted (adict.items(), key= operator .itemgetter(1 ), reverse= True ) # Output:
[('b', 5), ('a', 3), ('c', 1)]

Section 72.3: Using the key argument

Finding the minimum/maximum of a sequence of sequences is possible:

list_of_tuples = [(0 , 10 ), (1 , 15 ), (2 , 8 )]
min (list_of_tuples)
# Output: (0, 10)

but if you want to sort by a specific element in each sequence use the key-
argument:
min (list_of_tuples, key= lambda x: x[0 ]) # Output: (0, 10)
# Sorting by first element
min (list_of_tuples, key= lambda x: x[1 ]) # Output: (2, 8)
# Sorting by second element
sorted (list_of_tuples, key= lambda x: x[0 ]) # Output: [(0, 10), (1, 15), (2,
8)] # Sorting by first element (increasing)
sorted (list_of_tuples, key= lambda x: x[1 ]) # Output: [(2, 8), (0, 10), (1,
15)] # Sorting by first element

import operator # The operator module contains efficient alternatives to the

lambda function max (list_of_tuples, key= operator .itemgetter(0 )) # Sorting
by first element # Output: (2, 8)

max (list_of_tuples, key= operator .itemgetter(1 )) # Sorting by second

element # Output: (1, 15)
sorted (list_of_tuples, key= operator .itemgetter(0 ), reverse= True ) #
Reversed (decreasing) # Output: [(2, 8), (1, 15), (0, 10)]
sorted (list_of_tuples, key= operator .itemgetter(1 ), reverse= True ) #
Reversed(decreasing) # Output: [(1, 15), (0, 10), (2, 8)]

Section 72.4: Default Argument to max, min

You can't pass an empty sequence into max or min :
min ([])
ValueError: min() arg is an empty sequence
However, with Python 3, you can pass in the keyword argument default with
a value that will be returned if the sequence is empty, instead of raising an
exception:

max ([], default= 42 ) # Output: 42

max ([], default= 0 ) # Output: 0

Section 72.5: Getting a sorted sequence

Using one sequence:
sorted ((7 , 2 , 1 , 5 )) # tuple
# Output: [1, 2, 5, 7]
sorted (['c' , 'A' , 'b' ]) # list
# Output: ['A', 'b', 'c']
sorted ({11 , 8 , 1 }) # set
# Output: [1, 8, 11]
sorted ({'11' : 5 , '3' : 2 , '10' : 15 }) # dict
# Output: ['10', '11', '3'] # only iterates over the keys
sorted ('bdca' ) # string
# Output: ['a','b','c','d']
The result is always a new list ; the original data remains unchanged.

Section 72.6: Extracting N largest or N smallest items from an

iterable
To find some number (more than one) of largest or smallest values of an
iterable, you can use the nlargest and nsmallest of the heapq module:
import heapq
# get 5 largest items from the range
heapq .nlargest(5 , range (10 )) # Output: [9, 8, 7, 6, 5]
heapq .nsmallest(5 , range (10 )) # Output: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
This is much more efficient than sorting the whole iterable and then slicing
from the end or beginning. Internally these functions use the binary heap
priority queue data structure, which is very efficient for this use case.
Like min , max and sorted , these functions accept the optional key keyword
argument, which must be a function that, given an element, returns its sort
key.
Here is a program that extracts 1000 longest lines from a file:
import heapq
with open (filename) as f:
longest_lines = heapq .nlargest(1000 , f, key= len ) Here we open the file, and
pass the file handle f to nlargest. Iterating the file yields each line of the file
as a separate string; nlargest then passes each element (or line) is passed to
the function len to determine its sort key. len , given a string, returns the
length of the line in characters. This only needs storage for a list of 1000
largest lines so far, which can be contrasted with
longest_lines = sorted (f, key= len )[1000 :] which will have to hold the entire
file in memory .

Section 72.7: Getting the minimum or maximum of several

values

min (7 , 2 , 1 , 5 ) # Output: 1
max (7 , 2 , 1 , 5 ) # Output: 7

Section 72.8: Minimum and Maximum of a sequence

Getting the minimum of a sequence (iterable) is equivalent of accessing the
first element of a sorted sequence:

min ([2 , 7 , 5 ])
# Output: 2
sorted ([2 , 7 , 5 ])[0 ]
# Output: 2
The maximum is a bit more complicated, because sorted keeps order and max
returns the first encountered value. In case there are no duplicates the
maximum is the same as the last element of the sorted return:

max ([2 , 7 , 5 ])
# Output: 7
sorted ([2 , 7 , 5 ])[1 ] # Output: 7

But not if there are multiple elements that are evaluated as having the
maximum value:

class MyClass(object ):
def __init__ (self , value, name): self .value = value
self .name = name

def __lt__ (self , other):

return self .value < other.value
def __repr__ (self ):
return str (self .name)

sorted ([MyClass(4 , 'first' ), MyClass(1 , 'second' ), MyClass(4 , 'third' )]) #

Output: [second, first, third]
max ([MyClass(4 , 'first' ), MyClass(1 , 'second' ), MyClass(4 , 'third' )]) #
Output: first

Any iterable containing elements that support < or > operations are allowed.

Chapter 73: Counting

Section 73.1: Counting all occurrence of all items in an iterable:
collections.Counter

from collections import Counter

c = Counter(["a" , "b" , "c" , "d" , "a" , "b" , "a" , "c" , "d" ])

c
# Out: Counter({'a': 3, 'b': 2, 'c': 2, 'd': 2})
c["a" ]
# Out: 3

c[7 ] # not in the list (7 occurred 0 times!)

# Out: 0
The collections .Counter can be used for any iterable and counts every
occurrence for every element.
Note : One exception is if a dict or another collections .Mapping-like class is
given, then it will not count them, rather it creates a Counter with these
values:
Counter({"e" : 2 })
# Out: Counter({"e": 2})
Counter({"e" : "e" }) # warning Counter does not verify the values are int #
Out: Counter({"e": "e"})

Section 73.2: Getting the most common value(-s):

collections.Counter.most_common()
Counting the keys of a Mapping isn't possible with collections .Counter but
we can count the values :

from collections import Counter

adict = {'a' : 5 , 'b' : 3 , 'c' : 5 , 'd' : 2 , 'e' :2 , 'q' : 5 } Counter(adict.values())
# Out: Counter({2: 2, 3: 1, 5: 3})

The most common elements are available by the most_common-method:

# Sorting them from most-common to least-common value:

Counter(adict.values()).most_common()
# Out: [(5, 3), (2, 2), (3, 1)]

# Getting the most common value Counter(adict.values()).most_common(1 )

# Out: [(5, 3)]

# Getting the two most common values

Counter(adict.values()).most_common(2 ) # Out: [(5, 3), (2, 2)]
Section 73.3: Counting the occurrences of one item in a
sequence: list.count() and tuple.count()

alist = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 1 , 2 , 1 , 3 , 4 ]
alist.count(1 ) # Out: 3

atuple = ('bear' , 'weasel' , 'bear' , 'frog' ) atuple.count('bear' )

# Out: 2
atuple.count('fox' )
# Out: 0

Section 73.4: Counting the occurrences of a substring in a

string: str.count()

astring = 'thisisashorttext'
astring.count('t' )
# Out: 4

This works even for substrings longer than one character:

astring.count( 'th' ) # Out: 1

astring.count('is' ) # Out: 2
astring.count('text' ) # Out: 1

which would not be possible with collections .Counter which only counts
single characters:

from collections import Counter

Counter(astring)
# Out: Counter({'a': 1, 'e': 1, 'h': 2, 'i': 2, 'o': 1, 'r': 1, 's': 3, 't': 4, 'x': 1})

Section 73.5: Counting occurrences in numpy array

To count the occurrences of a value in a numpy array. This will work:

>>> import numpy as np

>>> a= np.array ([0 , 3 , 4 , 3 , 5 , 4 , 7 ])
>>> print np.sum (a== 3 )
2

The logic is that the boolean statement produces a array where all
occurrences of the requested values are 1 and all others are zero. So summing
these gives the number of occurencies. This works for arrays of any shape or
dtype.

There are two methods I use to count occurrences of all unique values in
numpy. Unique and bincount. Unique automatically flattens
multidimensional arrays, while bincount only works with 1d arrays only
containing positive integers.

>>> unique, counts= np.unique(a, return_counts= True )

>>> print unique, counts # counts[i] is equal to occurrences of unique[i] in a
[0 3 4 5 7 ] [1 2 2 1 1 ]
>>> bin_count= np.bincount(a)
>>> print bin_count # bin_count[i] is equal to occurrences of i in a [1 0 0 2 2
101]

If your data are numpy arrays it is generally much faster to use numpy
methods then to convert your data to generic methods.

Chapter 74: The Print Function

Section 74.1: Print basics

In Python 3 and higher, print is a function rather than a keyword.

print ('hello world!' )
# out: hello world!

foo = 1
bar = 'bar'
baz = 3.14

print (foo)
# out: 1
print (bar)
# out: bar
print (baz)
# out: 3.14

You can also pass a number of parameters to print :

print (foo, bar, baz) # out: 1 bar 3.14
Another way to print multiple parameters is by using a +
print (str (foo) + " " + bar + " " + str (baz)) # out: 1 bar 3.14

What you should be careful about when using + to print multiple parameters,
though, is that the type of the parameters should be the same. Trying to print
the above example without the cast to string first would result in an error,
because it would try to add the number 1 to the string "bar" and add that to
the number 3.14 .

# Wrong:
# type:int str float print (foo + bar + baz) # will result in an error

This is because the content of print will be evaluated first:

print (4 + 5 )
# out: 9
print ("4" + "5" ) # out: 45
print ([4 ] + [5 ]) # out: [4, 5]

Otherwise, using a + can be very helpful for a user to read output of variables
In the example below the output is very easy to read!
The script below demonstrates this

import random
#telling python to include a function to create random numbers randnum =
random .randint(0 , 12 )

#make a random number between 0 and 12 and assign it to a variable print

("The randomly generated number was - " + str (randnum))
You can prevent the print function from automatically printing a newline by
using the end parameter:
print ("this has no newline at the end of it... " , end= "" ) print ("see?" )
# out: this has no newline at the end of it... see?

If you want to write to a file, you can pass it as the parameter file :
with open ('my_file.txt' , 'w+' ) as my_file: print ("this goes to the file!" , file
my_file) this goes to the file!

Section 74.2: Print parameters

You can do more than just print text. print also has several parameters to
help you.
Argument sep: place a string between arguments.
Do you need to print a list of words separated by a comma or some other
string?

>>> print ('apples' , 'bananas' , 'cherries' , sep= ', ' )

apple, bananas, cherries
>>> print ('apple' , 'banana' , 'cherries' , sep= ', ' )
apple, banana, cherries
>>>

Argument end: use something other than a newline at the end

Without the end argument, all print () functions write a line and then go to
the beginning of the next line. You can change it to do nothing (use an empty
string of ''), or double spacing between paragraphs by using two newlines.

>>> print ("<a" , end= '' ); print (" class='jidn'" if 1 else "" , end= '' ); print ("/>"
< a class = 'jidn' />
>>> print ("paragraph1" , end= " \n\n " ); print ("paragraph2" )
paragraph1

paragraph2 >>>
Argument file : send output to someplace other than sys.stdout.
Now you can send your text to either stdout, a file, or StringIO and not care
which you are given. If it quacks like a file, it works like a file.

>>> def sendit(out, *values, sep= ' ' , end= ' \n ' ):
... print (*values, sep= sep, end= end, file = out)
...
>>> sendit(sys .stdout, 'apples' , 'bananas' , 'cherries' , sep= ' \t ' ) apples bananas
cherries
>>> with open ("delete-me.txt" , "w+" ) as f:
... sendit(f, 'apples' , 'bananas' , 'cherries' , sep= ' ' , end= ' \n ' )

...
>>> with open ("delete-me.txt" , "rt" ) as f: ... print (f.read())
...
apples bananas cherries

>>> There is a fourth parameter flush which will forcibly flush the stream.

Chapter 75: Regular Expressions (Regex)

Python makes regular expressions available through the re module.

Regular expressions are combinations of characters that are interpreted as

rules for matching substrings. For instance, the expression 'amount \D + \d +'
will match any string composed by the word amount plus an integral number,
separated by one or more non-digits, such as:amount= 100 , amount is 3 ,
amount is equal to: 33 , etc.

Section 75.1: Matching the beginning of a string

The first argument of re .match() is the regular expression, the second is the
string to match:
import re
pattern = r"123"
string = "123zzb"
re .match(pattern, string )
# Out: <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 3), match='123'>
match = re .match(pattern, string )
match.group()
# Out: '123'
You may notice that the pattern variable is a string prefixed with r, which
indicates that the string is a raw string literal .
A raw string literal has a slightly different syntax than a string literal, namely
a backslash \ in a raw string literal means "just a backslash" and there's no
need for doubling up backlashes to escape "escape sequences" such as
newlines (\n), tabs (\t), backspaces (\), form-feeds (\r), and so on. In normal
string literals, each backslash must be doubled up to avoid being taken as the
start of an escape sequence.

Hence, r" \n " is a string of 2 characters: \ and n. Regex patterns also use
backslashes, e.g. \d refers to any digit character. We can avoid having to
double escape our strings (" \\ d" ) by using raw strings (r" \d " ).
For instance:

string = " \\ t123zzb" # here the backslash is escaped, so there's no tab, just '\'
and 't' pattern = " \\ t123" # this will match \t (escaping the backslash) followed
by 123 re .match(pattern, string ).group() # no match
re .match(pattern, " \t 123zzb" ).group() # matches '\t123'

pattern = r" \\ t123"

re .match(pattern, string ).group() # matches '\\t123'
Matching is done from the start of the string only. If you want to match
anywhere use re .search instead:
match = re .match(r"(123)" , "a123zzb" )
match is None # Out: True
match = re .search(r"(123)" , "a123zzb" )
match.group() # Out: '123'

Section 75.2: Searching

pattern = r"(your base)"
sentence = "All your base are belong to us."

match = re .search(pattern, sentence) match.group(1 )

# Out: 'your base'

match = re .search(r"(belong.*)" , sentence) match.group(1 )

# Out: 'belong to us.'

Searching is done anywhere in the string unlike re .match. You can also use
re .findall.
You can also search at the beginning of the string (use ^),

match = re .search(r"^123" , "123zzb" ) match.group(0 )

# Out: '123'

match = re .search(r"^123" , "a123zzb" ) match is None

# Out: True

at the end of the string (use $),

match = re .search(r"123$" , "zzb123" ) match.group(0 )

# Out: '123'

match = re .search(r"123$" , "123zzb" ) match is None

# Out: True

or both (use both ^ and $):

match = re .search(r"^123$" , "123" ) match.group(0 )

# Out: '123'

Section 75.3: Precompiled patterns

import re

precompiled_pattern = re .compile (r"( \d +)" )

matches = precompiled_pattern.search("The answer is 41!" )
matches.group(1 )
# Out: 41

matches = precompiled_pattern.search("Or was it 42?" ) matches.group(1 )

# Out: 42

Compiling a pattern allows it to be reused later on in a program. However,

note that Python caches recently-used expressions (docs , SO answer ), so
"programs that use only a few regular expressions at a time needn ’t worry
about compiling regular expressions" .
import re

precompiled_pattern = re .compile (r"(.* \d +)" )

matches = precompiled_pattern.match("The answer is 41!" ) print
(matches.group(1 ))
# Out: The answer is 41

matches = precompiled_pattern.match("Or was it 42?" ) print

(matches.group(1 ))
# Out: Or was it 42

It can be used with re.match().

Section 75.4: Flags

For some special cases we need to change the behavior of the Regular
Expression, this is done using flags. Flags can be set in two ways, through the
flags keyword or directly in the expression.
Flags keyword
Below an example for re .search but it works for most functions in the re
module.

m = re .search("b" , "ABC" )
m is None
# Out: True

m = re .search("b" , "ABC" , flags= re .IGNORECASE)

m.group()
# Out: 'B'

m = re .search("a.b" , "A \n BC" , flags= re .IGNORECASE)

m is None
# Out: True

m = re .search("a.b" , "A \n BC" , flags= re .IGNORECASE|re .DOTALL)

m.group()
# Out: 'A\nB'
Common Flags

Flag Short Description

re .IGNORECASE, re .IMakes the pattern ignore the case
re .DOTALL, re .S Makes . match everything including newlines re
.MULTILINE, re .M Makes ^ match the begin of a line and $ the end of a
line re .DEBUG Turns on debug information

For the complete list of all available flags check the docs
Inline flags
From the docs :

(?iLmsux) (One or more letters from the set 'i', 'L', 'm', 's', 'u', 'x'.) The group
matches the empty string; the letters set the corresponding flags: re.I (ignore
case), re.L (locale dependent), re.M (multi-line), re.S (dot matches all), re.U
(Unicode dependent), and re.X (verbose), for the entire regular expression.
This is useful if you wish to include the flags as part of the regular
expression, instead of passing a flag argument to the re.compile() function.

Note that the (?x) flag changes how the expression is parsed. It should be
used first in the expression string, or after one or more whitespace characters.
If there are non-whitespace characters before the flag, the results are
undefined.

Section 75.5: Replacing

Replacements can be made on strings using re . sub.

Replacing strings
re .sub(r"t[0-9][0-9]" , "foo" , "my name t13 is t44 what t99 ever t44" )
# Out: 'my name foo is foo what foo ever foo'
Using group references
Replacements with a small number of groups can be made as follows:
re .sub(r"t([0-9])([0-9])" , r"t \2\1 " , "t13 t19 t81 t25" )
# Out: 't31 t91 t18 t52'
However, if you make a group ID like '10', this doesn't work : \10 is read as
'ID number 1 followed by 0'. So you have to be more specific and use the \g<
i> notation:
re .sub(r"t([0-9])([0-9])" , r"t \g <2> \g <1>" , "t13 t19 t81 t25" )
# Out: 't31 t91 t18 t52'
Using a replacement function

items = ["zero" , "one" , "two" ]

re .sub(r"a \[ ([0-3]) \] " , lambda match: items[int (match.group(1 ))], "Items:
a[0], a[1], something, a[2]" )
# Out: 'Items: zero, one, something, two'

Section 75.6: Find All Non-Overlapping Matches

re .findall(r"[0-9]{2,3}" , "some 1 text 12 is 945 here 4445588899" ) # Out:

['12', '945', '444', '558', '889']
Note that the r before "[0-9]{2,3}" tells python to interpret the string as-is; as
a "raw" string.
You could also use re .finditer() which works in the same way as re .findall()
but returns an iterator with SRE_Match objects instead of a list of strings:

results = re .finditer(r"([0-9]{2,3})" , "some 1 text 12 is 945 here 4445588899"

) print (results)
# Out: <callable-iterator object at 0x105245890>
for result in results:

print (result.group(0 ))
''' Out:
12
945
444
558
889 '''

Section 75.7: Checking for allowed characters

If you want to check that a string contains only a certain set of characters, in
this case a-z, A-Z and 0-9, you can do so like this,
import re
def is_allowed(string ):
characherRegex = re .compile (r'[^a-zA-Z0-9.]' ) string =
characherRegex.search(string ) return not bool (string )

print (is_allowed("abyzABYZ0099" )) # Out: 'True'

print (is_allowed("#*@#$%^" )) # Out: 'False'
You can also adapt the expression line from You can also adapt the
expression line from 9 .] to to 9 .], to disallow uppercase letters for example.
Partial credit: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1325265/2697955

Section 75.8: Splitting a string using regular expressions

You can also use regular expressions to split a string. For example,

import re
data = re .split(r' \s +' , 'James 94 Samantha 417 Scarlett 74' )
print ( data )
# Output: ['James', '94', 'Samantha', '417', 'Scarlett', '74']

Section 75.9: Grouping

Grouping is done with parentheses. Calling group() returns a string formed of
the matching parenthesized subgroups.

match.group() # Group without argument returns the entire match found #

Out: '123'
match.group(0 ) # Specifying 0 gives the same result as specifying no
argument # Out: '123'

Arguments can also be provided to group() to fetch a particular subgroup.

From the docs :
If there is a single argument, the result is a single string; if there are multiple
arguments, the result is a tuple with one item per argument.
Calling groups() on the other hand, returns a list of tuples containing the
subgroups.
sentence = "This is a phone number 672-123-456-9910" pattern = r".*
(phone).*?([ \d -]+)"
match = re .match(pattern, sentence)
match.groups() # The entire match as a list of tuples of the paranthesized
subgroups # Out: ('phone', '672-123-456-9910')
m.group() # The entire match as a string # Out: 'This is a phone number 672-
123-456-9910'
m.group(0 ) # The entire match as a string # Out: 'This is a phone number
672-123-456-9910'
m.group(1 ) # The first parenthesized subgroup. # Out: 'phone'
m.group(2 ) # The second parenthesized subgroup. # Out: '672-123-456-
9910'
m.group(1 , 2 ) # Multiple arguments give us a tuple.
# Out: ('phone', '672-123-456-9910')
Named groups

match = re .search(r'My name is (?P<name>[A-Za-z ]+)' , 'My name is John

Smith' ) match.group('name' )
# Out: 'John Smith'

match.group(1 )
# Out: 'John Smith'
Creates a capture group that can be referenced by name as well as by index.
Non-capturing groups
Using (?:) creates a group, but the group isn't captured. This means you can
use it as a group, but it won't pollute your "group space".
re .match(r'( \d +)( \+ ( \d +))?' , '11+22' ).groups() # Out: ('11', '+22', '22')
re .match(r'( \d +)(?: \+ ( \d +))?' , '11+22' ).groups() # Out: ('11', '22')
This example matches 11 +22 or 11, but not 11 +. This is since the + sign and
the second term are grouped. On the other hand, the + sign isn't captured.

Section 75.10: Escaping Special Characters

Special characters (like the character class brackets [ and ] below) are not
matched literally:

match = re .search(r'[b]' , 'a[b]c' )

match.group()
# Out: 'b'
By escaping the special characters, they can be matched literally:
match = re .search(r' \[ b \] ' , 'a[b]c' ) match.group()
# Out: '[b]'
The re .escape() function can be used to do this for you:

re .escape('a[b]c' )
# Out: 'a\\[b\\]c'
match = re .search(re .escape('a[b]c' ), 'a[b]c' ) match.group()
# Out: 'a[b]c'

The re .escape() function escapes all special characters, so it is useful if you

are composing a regular expression based on user input:

username = 'A.C.' # suppose this came from the user

re .findall(r'Hi {}!' .format(username), 'Hi A.C.! Hi ABCD!' ) # Out: ['Hi
A.C.!', 'Hi ABCD!']
re .findall(r'Hi {}!' .format(re .escape(username)), 'Hi A.C.! Hi ABCD!' ) #
Out: ['Hi A.C.!']

Section 75.11: Match an expression only in specific locations

Often you want to match an expression only in specific places (leaving them
untouched in others, that is). Consider the following sentence:
An apple a day keeps the doctor away (I eat an apple everyday).
Here the "apple" occurs twice which can be solved with so called
backtracking control verbs which are supported by the newer regex module.
The idea is:
forget_this | or this | and this as well | (but keep this)
With our apple example, this would be:

import regex as re
string = "An apple a day keeps the doctor away (I eat an apple everyday)."
rx = re .compile (r'''

\( [^()]* \) (*SKIP)(*FAIL) # match anything in parentheses and "throw it

away" | # or
apple # match an apple
''' , re .VERBOSE)
apples = rx.findall(string )
print (apples)
# only one

This matches "apple" only when it can be found outside of the parentheses.
Here's how it works:

While looking from left to right , the regex engine consumes everything to
the left, the (*SKIP) acts as an "always-true-assertion". Afterwards, it
correctly fails on (*FAIL) and backtracks.
Now it gets to the point of (*SKIP)from right to left (aka while
backtracking) where it is forbidden to go any further to the left. Instead, the
engine is told to throw away anything to the left and jump to the point where
the (*SKIP) was invoked.

Section 75.12: Iterating over matches using `re.finditer`

You can use re .finditer to iterate over all matches in a string. This gives you
(in comparison to re .findall extra information, such as information about the
match location in the string (indexes):

import re
text = 'You can try to find an ant in this string'
pattern = 'an? \w ' # find 'an' either with or without a following word character

for match in re .finditer(pattern, text): # Start index of match (integer) sStart =

match.start()

# Final index of match (integer) sEnd = match.end()

# Complete match (string) sGroup = match.group()
# Print match
print ('Match "{}" found at: [{},{}]' .format(sGroup, sStart, sEnd))
Result:

Match "an" found at: [5,7] Match "an" found at: [20,22] Match "ant" found
at: [23,26]
Chapter 76: Copying data
Section 76.1: Copy a dictionary
A dictionary object has the method copy . It performs a shallow copy of the
dictionary.

>>> d1 = {1 :[]}
>>> d2 = d1.copy ()
>>> d1 is d2
False
>>> d1[1 ] is d2[1 ]
True

Section 76.2: Performing a shallow copy

A shallow copy is a copy of a collection without performing a copy of its
elements.

>>> import copy

>>> c = [[1 , 2 ]]
>>> d = copy .copy (c)
>>> c is d
False
>>> c[0 ] is d[0 ]
True

Section 76.3: Performing a deep copy

If you have nested lists, it is desirable to clone the nested lists as well. This
action is called deep copy.

>>> import copy

>>> c = [[1 , 2 ]]
>>> d = copy .deepcopy(c)
>>> c is d
False
>>> c[0 ] is d[0 ]
False

Section 76.4: Performing a shallow copy of a list

You can create shallow copies of lists using slices.

>>> l1 = [1 , 2 , 3 ]
>>> l2 = l1[:] # Perform the shallow copy.
>>> l2
[1 , 2 , 3 ]
>>> l1 is l2
False

Section 76.5: Copy a set

Sets also have a copy method. You can use this method to perform a shallow
copy.

>>> s1 = {()}
>>> s2 = s1.copy ()
>>> s1 is s2

False
>>> s2.add(3 ) >>> s1
{[]}
>>> s2
{3 , []}

Chapter 77: Context Managers (“with” Statement)

While Python's context managers are widely used, few understand the
purpose behind their use. These statements, commonly used with reading and
writing files, assist the application in conserving system memory and
improve resource management by ensuring specific resources are only in use
for certain processes. This topic explains and demonstrates the use of
Python's context managers.
Section 77.1: Introduction to context managers and the with
statement

A context manager is an object that is notified when a context (a block of

code) starts and ends . You commonly use one with the with statement. It
takes care of the notifying.
For example, file objects are context managers. When a context ends, the file
object is closed automatically:
open_file = open (filename)
with open_file:
file_contents = open_file.read()
# the open_file object has automatically been closed.
The above example is usually simplified by using the as keyword:
with open (filename) as open_file: file_contents = open_file.read()
# the open_file object has automatically been closed.

Anything that ends execution of the block causes the context manager's exit
method to be called. This includes exceptions, and can be useful when an
error causes you to prematurely exit from an open file or connection. Exiting
a script without properly closing files/connections is a bad idea, that may
cause data loss or other problems. By using a context manager you can
ensure that precautions are always taken to prevent damage or loss in this
way. This feature was added in Python 2.5.

Section 77.2: Writing your own context manager

A context manager is any object that implements two magic methods

__enter__() and __exit__() (although it can implement other methods as
well):
class AContextManager():

def __enter__(self ):
print ("Entered" )
# optionally return an object
return "A-instance"

def __exit__(self , exc_type, exc_value, traceback ):

print ("Exited" + (" (with an exception)" if exc_type else "" ))
# return True if you want to suppress the exception

If the context exits with an exception, the information about that exception
will be passed as a triple exc_type, exc_value, traceback (these are the same
variables as returned by the sys .exc_info() function). If the context exits
normally, all three of these arguments will be None . If an exception occurs
and is passed to the __exit__ method, the method can return True in order to
suppress the exception, or the exception will be re-raised at the end of the
__exit__ function.

with AContextManager() as a: print ("a is %r" % a)

# Entered
# a is 'A-instance'
# Exited

with AContextManager() as a:
print ("a is %d" % a)
# Entered
# Exited (with an exception)
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
# TypeError: %d format: a number is required, not str

Note that in the second example even though an exception occurs in the
middle of the body of the with-statement, the __exit__ handler still gets
executed, before the exception propagates to the outer scope.
If you only need an __exit__ method, you can return the instance of the
context manager:

class MyContextManager: def __enter__(self ): return self

def __exit__(self ): print ('something' )

Section 77.3: Writing your own contextmanager using

generator syntax
It is also possible to write a context manager using generator syntax thanks to
the contextlib. contextmanager decorator:
import contextlib

@ contextlib.contextmanager def context_manager(num): print ('Enter' )

yield num + 1
print ('Exit' )

with context_manager(2 ) as cm:

# the following instructions are run when the 'yield' point of the context #
manager is reached.
# 'cm' will have the value that was yielded
print ('Right in the middle with cm = {}' .format(cm))

produces:

Enter
Right in the middle with cm = 3 Exit

The decorator simplifies the task of writing a context manager by converting

a generator into one. Everything before the yield expression becomes the
__enter__ method, the value yielded becomes the value returned by the
generator (which can be bound to a variable in the with statement), and
everything after the yield expression becomes the __exit__ method.

If an exception needs to be handled by the context manager, a try ..except

..finally -block can be written in the generator and any exception raised in the
with -block will be handled by this exception block.

@ contextlib.contextmanager
def error_handling_context_manager(num): print ("Enter" )
try :
yield num + 1
except ZeroDivisionError : print ("Caught error" )
finally :
print ("Cleaning up" )
print ("Exit" )

with error_handling_context_manager(1 ) as cm: print ("Dividing by cm =

{}" .format(cm)) print (2 / cm)

This produces:

Enter
Dividing by cm = 0 Caught error
Cleaning up
Exit

Section 77.4: Multiple context managers

You can open several content managers at the same time:

with open (input_path) as input_file, open (output_path, 'w' ) as output_file:
# do something with both files.
# e.g. copy the contents of input_file into output_file
for line in input_file:
output_file.write(line + ' \n ' )
It has the same effect as nesting context managers:
with open (input_path) as input_file:
with open (output_path, 'w' ) as output_file: for line in input_file:
output_file.write(line + ' \n ' )

Section 77.5: Assigning to a target

Many context managers return an object when entered. You can assign that
object to a new name in the with statement.
For example, using a database connection in a with statement could give you
a cursor object:
with database_connection as cursor: cursor.execute(sql_query)
File objects return themselves, this makes it possible to both open the file
object and use it as a context manager in one expression:
with open (filename) as open_file: file_contents = open_file.read()

Section 77.6: Manage Resources

class File():
def __init__ (self , filename, mode):
self .filename = filename
self .mode = mode

def __enter__(self ):
self .open_file = open (self .filename, self .mode) return self .open_file

def __exit__(self , *args):

self .open_file.close()
__init__ () method sets up the object, in this case setting up the file name and
mode to open file. __enter__() opens and returns the file and __exit__() just
closes it.
Using these magic methods (__enter__, __exit__) allows you to implement
objects which can be used easily with the with statement.
Use File class:
for _ in range (10000 ):
with File('foo.txt' , 'w' ) as f: f.write('foo' )

Chapter 78: The __name__ special variable

The __name__ special variable is used to check whether a file has been
imported as a module or not, and to identify a function, class, module object
by their __name__ attribute.

Section 78.1: __name__ == '__main__'

The special variable __name__ is not set by the user. It is mostly used to
check whether or not the module is being run by itself or run because an
import was performed. To avoid your module to run certain parts of its code
when it gets imported, check if __name__ == '__main__' .

Let module_1.py be just one line long:

import module2.py
And let's see what happens, depending on module2.py
Situation 1
module2.py
print ('hello' )
Running module1.py will print hello
Running module2.py will print hello
Situation 2
module2.py
if __name__ == '__main__' :
print ('hello' )
Running module1.py will print nothing
Running module2.py will print hello

Section 78.2: Use in logging

When configuring the built-in logging functionality, a common pattern is to

create a logger with the __name__ of the current module:
logger = logging .getLogger(__name__)
This means that the fully-qualified name of the module will appear in the
logs, making it easier to see where messages have come from.

Section 78.3: function_class_or_module.__name__

The special attribute __name__ of a function, class or module is a string
containing its name.
import os
class C: pass

def f(x):
x += 2 return x

print (f)
# <function f at 0x029976B0> print (f.__name__)
#f

print (C)
# <class '__main__.C'> print (C.__name__)
#C

print (os )
# <module 'os' from '/spam/eggs/'> print (os .__name__)
# os
The __name__ attribute is not, however, the name of the variable which
references the class, method or function, rather it is the name given to it when
defined.
def f(): pass
print (f.__name__) # f - as expected

g=f
print (g.__name__)
# f - even though the variable is named g, the function is still named f

This can be used, among others, for debugging:

def enter_exit_info(func):
def wrapper(*arg, **kw):
print '-- entering' , func.__name__ res = func(*arg, **kw)
print '-- exiting' , func.__name__ return res

return wrapper

@ enter_exit_info
def f(x):
print 'In:' , x
res = x + 2
print 'Out:' , res
return res

a = f(2 )

# Outputs:
# -- entering f # In: 2
# Out: 4
# -- exiting f

Chapter 79: Checking Path Existence and

Permissions
Parameter Details
os.F_OK Value to pass as the mode parameter of access() to test the
existence of path. os.R_OK Value to include in the mode parameter of
access() to test the readability of path. os.W_OK Value to include in the
mode parameter of access() to test the writability of path. os.X_OK Value to
include in the mode parameter of access() to determine if path can be
executed.

Section 79.1: Perform checks using os.access

os .access is much better solution to check whether directory exists and it's
accessible for reading and writing.
import os
path = "/home/myFiles/directory1"
## Check if path exists
os .access(path, os .F_OK)
## Check if path is Readable
os .access(path, os .R_OK)
## Check if path is Writable
os .access(path, os .W_OK)
## Check if path is Executable
os .access(path, os .E_OK)
also it's possible to perform all checks together
os .access(path, os .F_OK & os .R_OK & os .W_OK & os .E_OK) All the
above returns True if access is allowed and False if not allowed. These are
available on unix and windows.

Chapter 80: Creating Python packages

Section 80.1: Introduction

Every package requires a setup. py file which describes the package.

Consider the following directory structure for a simple package:

+-- package_name
||
| +-- __init__ .py
|
+-- setup.py

The __init__ .py contains only the line def foo(): return 100 .
The following setup.py will define the package:
from setuptools import setup

setup(
name= 'package_name' ,
version= '0.1' ,
description= 'Package Description' , url= 'http://example.com' ,
install_requires= [],

packages= ['package_name' ],

# package name
# version
# short description
# package URL
# list of packages this package depends # on.
# List of module names that installing # this package will provide.

)
virtualenv is great to test package installs without modifying your other
Python environments:

$ virtualenv .virtualenv
...
$ source .virtualenv/bin/activate $ python setup.py install
running install
...
Installed .../package_name0.1 -....egg ...
$ python
>>> import package_name
>>> package_name.foo()
100

Section 80.2: Uploading to PyPI

Once your setup.py is fully functional (see Introduction), it is very easy to
upload your package to PyPI .
Setup a .pypirc File
This file stores logins and passwords to authenticate your accounts. It is
typically stored in your home directory.
# .pypirc file

[ distutils ]
index-servers = pypi
pypitest

[pypi]
repository= https://pypi.python.org/pypi username= your_username
password= your_password

[pypitest]
repository= https://testpypi.python.org/pypi username= your_username
password= your_password

It is safer to use twine for uploading packages, so make sure that is installed.
$ pip install twine Register and Upload to testpypi (optional)

Note : PyPI does not allow overwriting uploaded packages , so it is prudent

to first test your deployment on a dedicated test server, e.g. testpypi. This
option will be discussed. Consider a versioning scheme for your package
prior to uploading such as calendar versioning or semantic versioning .

Either log in, or create a new account at testpypi . Registration is only

required the first time, although registering more than once is not harmful.
$ python setup.py register -r pypitest
While in the root directory of your package:
$ twine upload dist/* -r pypitest
Your package should now be accessible through your account.
Testing
Make a test virtual environment. Try to pip install your package from either
testpypi or PyPI.

# Using virtualenv
$ mkdir testenv
$ cd testenv
$ virtualenv .virtualenv
...
$ source .virtualenv/ bin/ activate
# Test from testpypi
( .virtualenv) pip install --verbose --extra-index-url https://
testpypi.python.org/ pypi package_name
...
# Or test from PyPI
( .virtualenv) $ pip install package_name
...

( .virtualenv) $ python
Python 3.5.1 ( default, Jan 27 2016, 19:16:39)
[ GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 7.0.2 ( clang-700.1.81)] on darwin
Type "help" , "copyright" , "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
import package_name
>>> package_name.foo() 100

If successful, your package is least importable. You might consider testing

your API as well before your final upload to PyPI. If you package failed
during testing, do not worry. You can still fix it, re-upload to testpypi and test
again.
Register and Upload to PyPI
Make sure twine is installed:
$ pip install twine
Either log in, or create a new account at PyPI .
$ python setup.py register -r pypi $ twine upload dist/*
That's it! Your package is now live .
If you discover a bug, simply upload a new version of your package.
Documentation
Don't forget to include at least some kind of documentation for your package.
PyPi takes as the default formatting language reStructuredText.
Readme
If your package doesn't have a big documentation, include what can help
other users in README.rst file. When the file is ready, another one is
needed to tell PyPi to show it.
Create setup.cfg file and put these two lines in it:
[metadata]
descriptionfile = README.rst
Note that if you try to put Markdown file into your package, PyPi will read it
as a pure text file without any formatting.
Licensing
It's often more than welcome to put a LICENSE.txt file in your package with
one of the OpenSource licenses to tell users if they can use your package for
example in commercial projects or if your code is usable with their license. In
more readable way some licenses are explained at TL;DR .

Section 80.3: Making package executable

If your package isn't only a library, but has a piece of code that can be used
either as a showcase or a standalone application when your package is
installed, put that piece of code into __main__ .py file.
Put the __main__ .py in the package_name folder. This way you will be able
to run it directly from console:
python -m package_name
If there's no __main__ .py file available, the package won't run with this
command and this error will be printed:
python: No module named package_name.__main__ ; 'package_name' is a
package and cannot be directly executed.

Chapter 81: Usage of "pip" module: PyPI Package

Manager
Sometimes you may need to use pip package manager inside python eg. when
some imports may raise ImportError and you want to handle the exception. If
you unpack on Windows
Python_root/Scripts/pip.exeinside is stored __main__ .py file, where main
class from pip package is imported. This means pip package is used
whenever you use pip executable. For usage of pip as executable see: pip:
PyPI Package Manager
Section 81.1: Example use of commands

import pip

command = 'install'
parameter = 'selenium'
second_param = 'numpy' # You can give as many package names as needed
switch = '--upgrade'

pip.main([command, parameter, second_param, switch])

Only needed parameters are obligatory, so both pip.main(['freeze' ]) and
pip.main(['freeze' , '' , '' ]) are acceptable.
Batch install
It is possible to pass many package names in one call, but if one
install/upgrade fails, whole installation process stops and ends with status '1'.
import pip

installed = pip.get_installed_distributions() list = []

for i in installed:

list .append(i.key)
pip.main(['install' ]+list +['--upgrade' ])
If you don't want to stop when some installs fail, call installation in loop.
for i in installed:
pip.main(['install' ]+i.key+['--upgrade' ])

Section 81.2: Handling ImportError Exception

When you use python file as module there is no need always check if
package is installed but it is still useful for scripts.
if __name__ == '__main__' : try :
import requests

except ImportError :
print ("To use this module you need 'requests' module" ) t = input ('Install
requests? y/n: ' )
if t == 'y' :
import pip
pip.main(['install' , 'requests' ])
import requests
import os
import sys
pass

else :
import os
import sys
print ('Some functionality can be unavailable.' )

else :
import requests
import os
import sys

Section 81.3: Force install

Many packages for example on version 3.4 would run on 3.6 just fine, but if
there are no distributions for specific platform, they can't be installed, but
there is workaround. In .whl files (known as wheels) naming convention
decide whether you can install package on specified platform. Eg.
scikit_learn‑0.18.1‑cp36‑cp36m‑win_amd64.whl[package_name]-[version]-
[python interpreter]-[pythoninterpreter]-[Operating System].whl. If name of
wheel file is changed, so platform does match, pip tries to install package
even if platform or python version does not match. Removing platform or
interpreter from name will rise an error in newest version of pip module
kjhfkjdf.whl is not a valid wheel filename..

Alternatively .whl file can be unpacked using an archiver as 7-zip. - It usually

contains distribution meta folder and folder with source files. These source
files can be simply unpacked to site-packages directory unless this wheel
contain installation script, if so, it has to be run first.

Chapter 82: pip: PyPI Package Manager

pip is the most widely-used package manager for the Python Package Index,
installed by default with recent versions of Python.

Section 82.1: Install Packages

To install the latest version of a package named SomePackage:
$ pip install SomePackage
To install a specific version of a package:
$ pip install SomePackage== 1.0.4
To specify a minimum version to install for a package:
$ pip install SomePackage>= 1.0.4
If commands shows permission denied error on Linux/Unix then use sudo
with the commands
Install from requirements files $ pip install -r requirements.txt
Each line of the requirements file indicates something to be installed, and like
arguments to pip install, Details on the format of the files are here:
Requirements File Format .
After install the package you can check it using freeze command: $ pip freeze

Section 82.2: To list all packages installed using `pip`

To list installed packages:

$ pip list
# example output
docutils (0.9.1)
Jinja2 (2.6 )
Pygments (1.5 )
Sphinx (1.1.2)

To list outdated packages, and show the latest version available:

$ pip list --outdated

# example output
docutils (Current: 0.9.1 Latest: 0.10 ) Sphinx (Current: 1.1.2 Latest: 1.1.3)

Section 82.3: Upgrade Packages

Running
$ pip install --upgrade SomePackage
will upgrade package SomePackage and all its dependencies. Also, pip
automatically removes older version of the package before upgrade.
To upgrade pip itself, do
$ pip install --upgrade pip
on Unix or
$ python -m pip install --upgrade pip on Windows machines.

Section 82.4: Uninstall Packages

To uninstall a package:
$ pip uninstall SomePackage

Section 82.5: Updating all outdated packages on Linux

pip doesn't current contain a flag to allow a user to update all outdated
packages in one shot. However, this can be accomplished by piping
commands together in a Linux environment:
pip list --outdated --local | grep -v '^ \ e' | cut -d = -f 1 | xargs -n1 pip install -U

This command takes all packages in the local virtualenv and checks if they
are outdated. From that list, it gets the package name and then pipes that to a
pip install -U command. At the end of this process, all local packages should
be updated.

Section 82.6: Updating all outdated packages on Windows

pip doesn't current contain a flag to allow a user to update all outdated
packages in one shot. However, this can be accomplished by piping
commands together in a Windows environment:
for /F "delims= " %i in ('pip list --outdated --local' ) do pip install -U %i

This command takes all packages in the local virtualenv and checks if they
are outdated. From that list, it gets the package name and then pipes that to a
pip install -U command. At the end of this process, all local packages should
be updated.
Section 82.7: Create a requirements.txt file of all packages on
the system

pip assists in creating requirements.txt files by providing the freeze option.

pip freeze > requirements.txt
This will save a list of all packages and their version installed on the system
to a file named requirements.txt in the current folder.

Section 82.8: Using a certain Python version with pip

If you have both Python 3 and Python 2 installed, you can specify which
version of Python you would like pip to use. This is useful when packages
only support Python 2 or 3 or when you wish to test with both.
If you want to install packages for Python 2, run either:
pip install [package]
or:
pip2 install [package]
If you would like to install packages for Python 3, do:
pip3 install [package]
You can also invoke installation of a package to a specific python installation
with:
\path\to\that\python.exe -m pip install some_package # on Windows OR
/usr/bin/python25 -m pip install some_package # on OS-X/Linux

On OS-X/Linux/Unix platforms it is important to be aware of the distinction

between the system version of python, (which upgrading make render your
system inoperable), and the user version(s) of python. You may , depending
on which you are trying to upgrade , need to prefix these commands with
sudo and input a password.

Likewise on Windows some python installations, especially those that are a

part of another package, can end up installed in system directories - those you
will have to upgrade from a command window running in Admin mode if
you find that it looks like you need to do this it is a very good idea to check
which python installation you are trying to upgrade with a command such as
python -c"import sys;print(sys.path);" or py 3.5 -c"import
sys;print(sys.path);" you can also check which pip you are trying to run with
pip --version

On Windows, if you have both python 2 and python 3 installed, and on your
path and your python 3 is greater than 3.4 then you will probably also have
the python launcher py on your system path. You can then do tricks like:

py 3 -m pip install -U some_package # Install/Upgrade some_package to the

latest python 3 py 3.3 -m pip install -U some_package # Install/Upgrade
some_package to python 3.3 if present py 2 -m pip install -U some_package #
Install/Upgrade some_package to the latest python 2 - 64 bit if present
py 2.7 -32 -m pip install -U some_package # Install/Upgrade some_package
to python 2.7 - 32 bit if present

If you are running & maintaining multiple versions of python I would

strongly recommend reading up about the python virtualenv or venvvirtual
environments which allow you to isolate both the version of python and
which packages are present.

Section 82.9: Create a requirements.txt file of packages only in

the current virtualenv
pip assists in creating requirements.txt files by providing the freeze option.
pip freeze --local > requirements.txt
The --local parameter will only output a list of packages and versions that are
installed locally to a virtualenv. Global packages will not be listed.

Section 82.10: Installing packages not yet on pip as wheels

Many, pure python, packages are not yet available on the Python Package
Index as wheels but still install fine. However, some packages on Windows
give the dreaded vcvarsall.bat not found error.

The problem is that the package that you are trying to install contains a C or
C++ extension and is not currently available as a pre-built wheel from the
python package index, pypi , and on windows you do not have the tool chain
needed to build such items.
The simplest answer is to go to Christoph Gohlke's excellent site and locate
the appropriate version of the libraries that you need. By appropriate in the
package name a -cp NN - has to match your version of python, i.e. if you are
using windows 32 bit python even on win64 the name must include the name
must include and if using the 64 bit python it must include include and then
the python version must match, i.e. for Python 34 the filename must include -
cp -cp , etc. this is basically the magic that pip does for you on the pypi
site.

Alternatively, you need to get the appropriate windows development kit

for the version of python that you are using, the headers for any library
that the package you are trying to build interfaces to, possibly the python
headers for the version of python, etc.

Python 2.7 used Visual Studio 2008, Python 3.3 and 3.4 used Visual
Studio 2010, and Python 3.5+ uses Visual Studio 2015.

Install “Visual C++ Compiler Package for Python 2.7 ”, which is

available from Microsoft’s website or Install “Windows SDK for
Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 ” (v7.1), which is available from
Microsoft’s website or
Install Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition , (or any later version,
when these are released) , ensuring you select the options to install C &
C++ supportno longer the default I am told that this can take up to 8 hours
to download and install so make sure that those options are set on the
first try.

Then you may need to locate the header files, at the matching revision for
any libraries that your desired package links to and download those to
an appropriate locations.
Finally you can let pip do your build - of course if the package has
dependencies that you don't yet have you may also need to find the
header files for them as well.

Alternatives: It is also worth looking out, both on pypi or Christop's site ,

for any slightly earlier version of the package that you are looking for
that is either pure python or pre-built for your platform and python
version and possibly using those, if found, until your package does
become available. Likewise if you are using the very latest version of
python you may find that it takes the package maintainers a little time to
catch up so for projects that really need a specific package you may have
to use a slightly older python for the moment. You can also check the
packages source site to see if there is a forked version that is available
pre-built or as pure python and searching for alternative packages that
provide the functionality that you require but are available - one
example that springs to mind is the Pillow , actively maintained , drop in
replacement for PIL currently not updated in 6 years and not available for
python 3 .

Afterword , I would encourage anybody who is having this problem to go

to the bug tracker for the package and add to, or raise if there isn't one
already, a ticket politely requesting that the package maintainers
provide a wheel on pypi for your specific combination of platform and
python, if this is done then normally things will get better with time,
some package maintainers don't realise that they have missed a given
combination that people may be using.

Note on Installing Pre-Releases

Pip follows the rules of Semantic Versioning and by default prefers

released packages over pre-releases. So if a given package has been
released as V0.98 and there is also a release candidate V1.0-rc1 the
default behaviour of pip install will be to install V0.98 - if you wish to
install the release candidate, you are advised to test in a virtual
environment first , you can enable do so with --pip install --prepackage-
name or --pip install --pre -upgradepackage-name . In many cases pre-
releases or release candidates may not have wheels built for all platform
& version combinations so you are more likely to encounter the issues
above.

Note on Installing Development Versions

You can also use pip to install development versions of packages from
github and other locations, since such code is in flux it is very unlikely to
have wheels built for it, so any impure packages will require the presence
of the build tools, and they may be broken at any time so the user is
strongly encouraged to only install such packages in a virtual
environment.

Three options exist for such installations:

1. Download compressed snapshot, most online version control systems

have the option to download a compressed snapshot of the code. This can
be downloaded manually and then installed with pip install
path/to/downloaded/file note that for most compression formats pip will
handle unpacking to a cache area, etc.

2. Let pip handle the download & install for you with: pip
installURL/of/package/repository - you may also need to use the --trusted-
host, --client-cert and/or --proxy flags for this to work correctly,
especially in a corporate environment. e.g:

> py -3.5-32 -m venv demo-pip

> demo-pip\Scripts\activate.bat
> python -m pip install -U pip
Collecting pip
Using cached pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: pip
Found existing installation: pip 8.1.1
Uninstalling pip-8.1.1:
Successfully uninstalled pip-8.1.1
Successfully installed pip-9.0.1
> pip install git+https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/ Collecting
git+https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/ Cloning
https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/ to
c:\users\steve~1\appdata\local\temp\pip-04yn9hpp-build
Collecting six>=1.5 (from Sphinx==1.7.dev20170506)
Using cached six-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting Jinja2>=2.3 (from Sphinx==1.7.dev20170506) Using cached
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docutils-0.13.1 imagesize-0.7.1 pytz-2017.2 requests-2.13.0 six-1.10.0
snowballstemmer-1.2.1 sphinxcontrib-websupport-1.0.0 sqlalchemy-1.1.9
typing-3.6.1 whoosh-2.7.4

Note the git+ prefix to the URL.

3. Clone the repository using git, mercurial or other acceptable tool,

preferably a DVCS tool, and use pip installpath/to/cloned/repo - this will
both process any requires.text file and perform the build and setup steps,
you can manually change directory to your cloned repository and run pip
install -r requires.txt and then python setup.py install to get the same effect.
The big advantages of this approach is that while the initial clone
operation may take longer than the snapshot download you can update
to the latest with, in the case of git: git pull origin master and if the
current version contains errors you can use pip uninstall package-name
then use git checkout commands to move back through the repository
history to earlier version(s) and re-try.

Chapter 83: Parsing Command Line arguments

Most command line tools rely on arguments passed to the program upon
its execution. Instead of prompting for input, these programs expect data
or specific flags (which become booleans) to be set. This allows both the
user and other programs to run the Python file passing it data as it
starts. This section explains and demonstrates the implementation and
usage of command line arguments in Python.

Section 83.1: Hello world in argparse

The following program says hello to the user. It takes one positional
argument, the name of the user, and can also be told the greeting.
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser .add_argument('name' ,
help = 'name of user'
)

parser .add_argument('-g' , '--greeting' ,

default= 'Hello' ,
help = 'optional alternate greeting'

)
args = parser .parse_args()

print ("{greeting}, {name}!" .format(

greeting= args.greeting,
name= args.name)

)
$ python hello.py - help
usage: hello.py [-h] [-g GREETING] name
positional arguments:
name name of user

optional arguments:
-h, -help show this help message and exit
-g GREETING, --greeting GREETING

optional alternate greeting

$ python hello.py world

Hello, world!
$ python hello.py John -g Howdy
Howdy, John!

For more details please read the argparse documentation .

Section 83.2: Using command line arguments with argv

Whenever a Python script is invoked from the command line, the user
may supply additional command line arguments which will be passed on
to the script. These arguments will be available to the programmer from
the system variable sys .argv ("argv" is a traditional name used in most
programming languages, and it means "argument vector").
By convention, the first element in the sys .argv list is the name of the
Python script itself, while the rest of the elements are the tokens passed
by the user when invoking the script.

# cli.py
import sys
print (sys .argv)

$ python cli.py => [ 'cli.py' ]

$ python cli.py fizz => [ 'cli.py' , 'fizz' ]
$ python cli.py fizz buzz => [ 'cli.py' , 'fizz' , 'buzz' ]

Here's another example of how to use argv. We first strip off the initial
element of sys.argv because it contains the script's name. Then we
combine the rest of the arguments into a single sentence, and finally
print that sentence prepending the name of the currently logged-in user
(so that it emulates a chat program).

import getpass import sys

words = sys .argv[1 :]

sentence = " " .join(words)
print ("[%s] %s" % (getpass .getuser(), sentence))

The algorithm commonly used when "manually" parsing a number of

non-positional arguments is to iterate over the sys .argv list. One way is to
go over the list and pop each element of it:

# reverse and copy sys.argv

argv = reversed (sys .argv)
# extract the first element
arg = argv.pop()
# stop iterating when there's no more args to pop() while len (argv) > 0 :

if arg in ('-f' , '--foo' ):

print ('seen foo!' )
elif arg in ('-b' , '--bar' ):
print ('seen bar!' )
elif arg in ('-a' , '--with-arg' ):
arg = arg.pop()
print ('seen value: {}' .format(arg))
# get the next value
arg = argv.pop()

Section 83.3: Setting mutually exclusive arguments with

argparse

If you want two or more arguments to be mutually exclusive. You can

use the function
argparse.ArgumentParser.add_mutually_exclusive_group(). In the
example below, either foo or bar can exist but not both at the same time.

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
group = parser .add_mutually_exclusive_group() group.add_argument("-
f" , "--foo" ) group.add_argument("-b" , "--bar" ) args = parser
.parse_args()
print "foo = " , args.foo
print "bar = " , args.bar

If you try to run the script specifying both --foo and --bar arguments, the
script will complain with the below message.
error: argument -b/--bar: not allowed with argument -f/--foo

Section 83.4: Basic example with docopt

docopt turns command-line argument parsing on its head. Instead of

parsing the arguments, you just write the usage string for your program,
and docopt parses the usage string and uses it to extract the command
line arguments.
"""
Usage:
script_name.py [-a] [-b] <path>

Options:
-a Print all the things.
-b Get more bees into the path.

"""
from docopt import docopt

if __name__ == "__main__" :
args = docopt(__doc__)
import pprint ; pprint .pprint (args)

Sample runs:
$ python script_name.py

Usage:
script_name.py [-a] [-b] < path>
$ python script_name.py something
{'-a' : False ,
'-b' : False ,
'<path>' : 'something' }
$ python script_name.py something -a
{'-a' : True ,
'-b' : False ,
'<path>' : 'something' }
$ python script_name.py -b something -a
{'-a' : True ,
'-b' : True ,
'<path>' : 'something' }

Section 83.5: Custom parser error message with argparse

You can create parser error messages according to your script needs.
This is through the argparse.ArgumentParser.error function. The below
example shows the script printing a usage and an error message to stderr
when --foo is given but not --bar.

import argparse parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()

parser .add_argument("-f" , "--foo" )
parser .add_argument("-b" , "--bar" )
args = parser .parse_args()
if args.foo and args.bar is None :

parser .error( "--foo requires --bar. You did not specify bar." )
print "foo =" , args.foo print "bar =" , args.bar
Assuming your script name is sample.py, and we run: python sample.py
--foo ds_in_fridge
The script will complain with the following:
usage: sample.py [-h] [-f FOO] [-b BAR]
sample.py: error: --foo requires --bar. You did not specify bar.

Section 83.6: Conceptual grouping of arguments with

argparse.add_argument_group()

When you create an argparse ArgumentParser() and run your program

with '-h' you get an automated usage message explaining what
arguments you can run your software with. By default, positional
arguments and conditional arguments are separated into two categories,
for example, here is a small script (example.py) and the output when you
run python example.py -h.

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description= 'Simple example' )

parser .add_argument('name' , help = 'Who to greet' , default= 'World' )
parser .add_argument('--bar_this' )
parser .add_argument('--bar_that' )
parser .add_argument('--foo_this' )
parser .add_argument('--foo_that' )
args = parser .parse_args()

usage: example.py [-h] [--bar_this BAR_THIS] [--bar_that BAR_THAT]

[--foo_this FOO_THIS] [--foo_that FOO_THAT] name

Simple example
positional arguments:
name Who to greet

optional arguments:
-h, -help
--bar_this BAR_THIS
--bar_that BAR_THAT
--foo_this FOO_THIS
--foo_that FOO_THAT show this help message and exit

There are some situations where you want to separate your arguments
into further conceptual sections to assist your user. For example, you
may wish to have all the input options in one group, and all the output
formatting options in another. The above example can be adjusted to
separate the --foo_* args from the --bar_* args like so.

import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description = 'Simple example' )

parser .add_argument('name' , help = 'Who to greet' , default= 'World' )

Create two argument groups
foo_group = parser .add_argument_group(title= 'Foo options' )
bar_group = parser .add_argument_group(title= 'Bar options' ) # Add
arguments to those groups
foo_group.add_argument('--bar_this' )
foo_group.add_argument('--bar_that' )
bar_group.add_argument('--foo_this' )
bar_group.add_argument('--foo_that' )
args = parser .parse_args()

Which produces this output when python example.py -h is run:

usage: example.py [-h] [--bar_this BAR_THIS] [--bar_that BAR_THAT]

[--foo_this FOO_THIS] [--foo_that FOO_THAT] name
Simple example
positional arguments:
name Who to greet
optional arguments:
-h , - help show this help message and exit

Foo options:
--bar_this BAR_THIS
--bar_that BAR_THAT

Bar options:
--foo_this FOO_THIS
--foo_that FOO_THAT

Section 83.7: Advanced example with docopt and

docopt_dispatch
As with docopt, with [docopt_dispatch] you craft your - help in the
__doc__ variable of your entry-point module. There, you call dispatch
with the doc string as argument, so it can run the parser over it.
That being done, instead of handling manually the arguments (which
usually ends up in a high cyclomatic if/else structure), you leave it to
dispatch giving only how you want to handle the set of arguments.
This is what the dispatch.on decorator is for: you give it the argument or
sequence of arguments that should trigger the function, and that
function will be executed with the matching values as parameters.
"""Run something in development or production mode.

Usage: run.py --development <host> <port> run.py --production <host>

<port> run.py items add <item>
run.py items delete <item>

"""
from docopt_dispatch import dispatch

@ dispatch.on('--development' )
def development(host, port, **kwargs): print ('in *development* mode' )
@ dispatch.on('--production' )

def development(host , port , **kwargs): print ( 'in *production* mode' )

@ dispatch.on('items' , 'add' ) def items_add(item, **kwargs): print

('adding item...' )

@ dispatch.on('items' , 'delete' ) def items_delete(item, **kwargs): print

('deleting item...' )

if __name__ == '__main__' : dispatch(__doc__)

Chapter 84: Subprocess Library

Parameter Details
args A single executable, or sequence of executable and arguments - 'ls' ,
['ls' , '-la' ] shell Run under a shell? The default shell to /bin/sh on POSIX.
cwd Working directory of the child process.

Section 84.1: More flexibility with Popen

Using subprocess .Popen give more fine-grained control over launched
processes than subprocess .call.
Launching a subprocess
process = subprocess .Popen([r 'C: \p ath \t o \a pp.exe' , 'arg1' , '--flag' , 'arg'
The signature for Popen is very similar to the call function; however,
Popen will return immediately instead of waiting for the subprocess to
complete like call does.
Waiting on a subprocess to complete
process = subprocess .Popen([r 'C: \p ath \t o \a pp.exe' , 'arg1' , '--flag' , 'arg'
process.wait()
Reading output from a subprocess
process = subprocess .Popen([r 'C: \p ath \t o \a pp.exe' ] , stdout = subprocess
.PIPE , stderr = subprocess .PIPE)

# This will block until process completes

stdout, stderr = process.communicate()
print stdout
print stderr

Interactive access to running subprocesses

You can read and write on stdin and stdout even while the subprocess
hasn't completed. This could be useful when automating functionality in
another program.
Writing to a subprocess
process = subprocess .Popen([r 'C: \p ath \t o \a pp.exe' ] , stdout = subprocess
.PIPE , stdin = subprocess .PIPE)
process.stdin.write( 'line of input \n ' ) # Write input
line = process.stdout. readline () # Read a line from stdout
# Do logic on line read.
However, if you only need one set of input and output, rather than
dynamic interaction, you should use communicate() rather than directly
accessing stdin and stdout.
Reading a stream from a subprocess
In case you want to see the output of a subprocess line by line, you can
use the following snippet:
process = subprocess .Popen( < your_command >, stdout = subprocess .PIPE)
while process.poll() is None :
output_line = process.stdout. readline ()
in the case the subcommand output do not have EOL character, the
above snippet does not work. You can then read the output character by
character as follows:
process = subprocess .Popen( < your_command >, stdout = subprocess .PIPE)
while process.poll() is None :
output_line = process.stdout.read( 1 )

The 1 specified as argument to the read method tells read to read 1

character at time. You can specify to read as many characters you want
using a different number. Negative number or 0 tells to read to read as a
single string until the EOF is encountered (see here ).

In both the above snippets, the process.poll() is None until the subprocess
finishes. This is used to exit the loop once there is no more output to
read.
The same procedure could be applied to the stderr of the subprocess.

Section 84.2: Calling External Commands

The simplest use case is using the subprocess .call function. It accepts a
list as the first argument. The first item in the list should be the external
application you want to call. The other items in the list are arguments
that will be passed to that application.

subprocess .call([r 'C: \p ath \t o \a pp.exe' , 'arg1' , '--flag' , 'arg' ])

For shell commands, set shell = True and provide the command as a string
instead of a list.
subprocess .call( 'echo "Hello, world"' , shell = True )
Note that the two command above return only the exit status of the
subprocess. Moreover, pay attention when using shell = True since it
provides security issues (see here ).
If you want to be able to get the standard output of the subprocess, then
substitute the subprocess .call with subprocess .check_output. For more
advanced use, refer to this.

Section 84.3: How to create the command list argument

The subprocess method that allows running commands needs the

command in form of a list (at least using shell_mode = True ).

The rules to create the list are not always straightforward to follow,
especially with complex commands. Fortunately, there is a very helpful
tool that allows doing that: shlex . The easiest way of creating the list to
be used as command is the following:

import shlex
cmd_to_subprocess = shlex .split(command_used_in_the_shell)
A simple example:
import shlex
shlex .split( 'ls --color -l -t -r' ) out: [ 'ls' , '--color' , '-l' , '-t' , '-r' ]

Chapter 85: setup.py

Parameter Usage
name Name of your distribution.
version Version string of your distribution.

packages
List of Python packages (that is, directories containing modules) to
include. This can be specified manually, but a call to
setuptools.find_packages() is typically used instead. py_modulesList of
top-level Python modules (that is, single .py files) to include.

Section 85.1: Purpose of setup.py

The setup script is the center of all activity in building, distributing, and
installing modules using the Distutils. Its purpose is the correct
installation of the software.
If all you want to do is distribute a module called foo, contained in a file
foo.py, then your setup script can be as simple as this:
from distutils .core import setup

setup(name = 'foo' ,
version= '1.0' ,
py_modules= ['foo' ],
)

To create a source distribution for this module, you would create a setup
script, setup.py, containing the above code, and run this command from
a terminal:
python setup.py sdist
sdist will create an archive file (e.g., tarball on Unix, ZIP file on
Windows) containing your setup script setup.py, and your module
foo.py. The archive file will be named foo-1.0.tar.gz (or .zip), and will
unpack into a directory foo-1.0.
If an end-user wishes to install your foo module, all she has to do is
download foo-1.0.tar.gz (or .zip), unpack it, and—from the foo-1.0
directory—run
python setup.py install
Section 85.2: Using source control metadata in setup.py

setuptools_scm is an officially-blessed package that can use Git or

Mercurial metadata to determine the version number of your package,
and find Python packages and package data to include in it.
from setuptools import setup , find_packages

setup(
setup_requires= ['setuptools_scm' ], use_scm_version= True ,
packages= find_packages(),
include_package_data= True ,

)
This example uses both features; to only use SCM metadata for the
version, replace the call to find_packages() with your manual package
list, or to only use the package finder, remove use_scm_version = True .

Section 85.3: Adding command line scripts to your python

package

Command line scripts inside python packages are common. You can
organise your package in such a way that when a user installs the
package, the script will be available on their path.
If you had the greetings package which had the command line script
hello_world.py.

greetings/
greetings/
__init__ .py
hello_world.py

You could run that script by running:

python greetings/greetings/hello_world.py
However if you would like to run it like so:
hello_world.py
You can achieve this by adding scripts to your setup() in setup.py like
this:
from setuptools import setup setup(
name= 'greetings' ,
scripts= ['hello_world.py' ] )

When you install the greetings package now, hello_world.py will be

added to your path.
Another possibility would be to add an entry point:
entry_points = { 'console_scripts' : [ 'greetings=greetings.hello_world:main'
]}
This way you just have to run it like: greetings

Section 85.4: Adding installation options

As seen in previous examples, basic use of this script is:
python setup.py install
But there is even more options, like installing the package and have the
possibility to change the code and test it without having to re-install it.
This is done using:
python setup.py develop
If you want to perform specific actions like compiling a Sphinx
documentation or building fortran code, you can create your own option
like this:
cmdclasses = dict ()
class BuildSphinx(Command):
"""Build Sphinx documentation."""
description = 'Build Sphinx documentation' user_options = []
def initialize_options( self ): pass
def finalize_options( self ): pass

def run(self ):
import sphinx
sphinx.build_main(['setup.py' , '-b' , 'html' , './doc' , './doc/_build/html' ])
sphinx.build_main(['setup.py' , '-b' , 'man' , './doc' , './doc/_build/man' ])

cmdclasses[ 'build_sphinx' ] = BuildSphinx

setup(
...
cmdclass= cmdclasses, )

initialize_options and finalize_options will be executed before and after

the run function as their names suggests it.
After that, you will be able to call your option: python setup.py
build_sphinx

Chapter 86: Recursion

Section 86.1: The What, How, and When of Recursion

Recursion occurs when a function call causes that same function to be

called again before the original function call terminates. For example,
consider the well-known mathematical expression x! (i.e. the factorial
operation). The factorial operation is defined for all nonnegative integers
as follows:

If the number is 0, then the answer is 1.

Otherwise, the answer is that number times the factorial of one less than
that number.
In Python, a naïve implementation of the factorial operation can be
defined as a function as follows:
def factorial(n):
if n == 0 :
return 1
else :
return n * factorial(n - 1 )

Recursion functions can be difficult to grasp sometimes, so let's walk

through this step-by-step. Consider the expression factorial(3 ). This and
all function calls create a new environment. An environment is basically
just a table that maps identifiers (e.g. n, factorial, print , etc.) to their
corresponding values. At any point in time, you can access the current
environment using locals (). In the first function call, the only local
variable that gets defined is n = 3 . Therefore, printing locals () would
show {'n' : 3 }. Since n == 3 , the return value becomes n * factorial(n - 1
).

At this next step is where things might get a little confusing. Looking at
our new expression, we already know what n is. However, we don't yet
know what factorial(n - 1 ) is. First, n - 1 evaluates to 2. Then, 2 is passed
to factorial as the value for n. Since this is a new function call, a second
environment is created to store this new n. Let A be the first
environment and B be the second environment. A still exists and equals
{'n' : 3 }, however, B (which equals {'n' : 2 }) is the current environment.
Looking at the function body, the return value is, again, n * factorial(n -
1 ). Without evaluating this expression, let's substitute it into the original
return expression. By doing this, we're mentally discarding B , so
remember to substitute n accordingly (i.e. references to B 's n are
replaced with n - 1 which uses A 's n). Now, the original return
expression becomes n * ((n - 1 ) * factorial((n
- 1 ) - 1 )). Take a second to ensure that you understand why this is so.

Now, let's evaluate the factorial((n - 1 ) - 1 )) portion of that. Since A 's n

== 3 , we're passing 1 into factorial. Therefore, we are creating a new
environment C which equals {'n' : 1 }. Again, the return value is n *
factorial(n
- 1 ). So let's replace factorial((n - 1 ) - 1 )) of the “original” return
expression similarly to how we adjusted the original return expression
earlier. The “original” expression is now n * ((n - 1 ) * ((n - 2 ) *
factorial((n 2 ) - 1 ))).

Almost done. Now, we need to evaluate factorial((n - 2 ) - 1 ). This time,

we're passing in 0. Therefore, this evaluates to 1. Now, let's perform our
last substitution. The “original” return expression is now n * ((n - 1 ) *
((n
- 2 ) * 1 )). Recalling that the original return expression is evaluated
under A , the expression becomes 3 * ((3 1 ) * ((3 - 2 ) * 1 )). This, of
course, evaluates to 6. To confirm that this is the correct answer, recall
that 3 ! == 3 * 2 * 1 == 6 . Before reading any further, be sure that you fully
understand the concept of environments and how they apply to
recursion.

The statement if n == 0 : return 1 is called a base case. This is because, it

exhibits no recursion. A base case is absolutely required. Without one,
you'll run into infinite recursion. With that said, as long as you have at
least one base case, you can have as many cases as you want. For
example, we could have equivalently written factorial as follows:

def factorial(n):
if n == 0 :
return 1

elif n == 1 :
return 1
else :
return n * factorial(n - 1 )

You may also have multiple recursion cases, but we won't get into that
since it's relatively uncommon and is often difficult to mentally process.
You can also have “parallel” recursive function calls. For example,
consider the Fibonacci sequence which is defined as follows:

If the number is 0, then the answer is 0.

If the number is 1, then the answer is 1.
Otherwise, the answer is the sum of the previous two Fibonacci numbers.

We can define this is as follows:

def fib(n):
if n == 0 or n == 1 :
return n
else :
return fib(n - 2 ) + fib(n - 1 )
I won't walk through this function as thoroughly as I did with factorial( 3
), but the final return value of fib( 5 ) is equivalent to the following (
syntactically invalid) expression:

( fib((n - 2 ) - 2 ) +
(

fib(((n - 2 ) - 1 ) - 2 ) +
fib(((n - 2 ) - 1 ) - 1 )
)
)
+
(

( fib(((n - 1 ) - 2 ) - 2 ) +
fib(((n - 1 ) - 2 ) - 1 )

)
+
(

fib(((n - 1 ) - 1 ) - 2 ) +
(

fib((((n - 1 ) - 1 ) - 1 ) - 2 ) +
fib((((n - 1 ) - 1 ) - 1 ) - 1 )

)
)
)
This becomes ( 1 + ( 0 + 1 )) + (( 0 + 1 ) + ( 1 + ( 0 + 1 ))) which of course evaluates
to 5.
Now, let's cover a few more vocabulary terms:

A tail call is simply a recursive function call which is the last operation to
be performed before returning a value. To be clear, return foo(n - 1 ) is a
tail call, but return foo(n - 1 ) + 1 is not (since the addition is the last
operation).
Tail call optimization (TCO) is a way to automatically reduce recursion
in recursive functions. Tail call elimination (TCE) is the reduction of a
tail call to an expression that can be evaluated without recursion. TCE is
a type of TCO.

Tail call optimization is helpful for a number of reasons:

The interpreter can minimize the amount of memory occupied by

environments. Since no computer has unlimited memory, excessive
recursive function calls would lead to a stack overflow . The interpreter
can reduce the number of stack frame switches.

Python has no form of TCO implemented for a number of a reasons .

Therefore, other techniques are required to skirt this limitation. The
method of choice depends on the use case. With some intuition, the
definitions of factorial and fib can relatively easily be converted to
iterative code as follows:

def factorial(n): product = 1

while n > 1 :

product * = n n = 1
return product

def fib(n):
a, b = 0 , 1
while n > 0 :

a,b=b,a+bn=1
return a
This is usually the most efficient way to manually eliminate recursion,
but it can become rather difficult for more complex functions.
Another useful tool is Python's lru_cache decorator which can be used to
reduce the number of redundant calculations.

You now have an idea as to how to avoid recursion in Python, but when
should you use recursion? The answer is “not often”. All recursive
functions can be implemented iteratively. It's simply a matter of figuring
out how to do so. However, there are rare cases in which recursion is
okay. Recursion is common in Python when the expected inputs wouldn't
cause a significant number of a recursive function calls.

If recursion is a topic that interests you, I implore you to study

functional languages such as Scheme or Haskell. In such languages,
recursion is much more useful.

Please note that the above example for the Fibonacci sequence, although
good at showing how to apply the definition in python and later use of
the lru cache, has an inefficient running time since it makes 2 recursive
calls for each non base case. The number of calls to the function grows
exponentially to n.
Rather non-intuitively a more efficient implementation would use linear
recursion:

def fib(n):
if n <= 1 :

return (n, 0 )
else :
(a, b) = fib(n - 1 )
return (a + b, a)

But that one has the issue of returning a pair of numbers. This emphasizes
that some functions really do not gain much from recursion.

Section 86.2: Tree exploration with recursion

Say we have the following tree:

root
-A
- AA
- AB
-B
- BA
- BB
- BBA

Now, if we wish to list all the names of the elements, we could do this
with a simple for-loop. We assume there is a function get_name() to
return a string of the name of a node, a function get_children() to return
a list of all the sub-nodes of a given node in the tree, and a function
get_root() to get the root node.

root = get_root(tree)
for node in get_children(root):
print (get_name(node))
for child in get_children(node):
print (get_name(child))
for grand_child in get_children(child): print (get_name(grand_child)) #
prints: A, AA, AB, B, BA, BB, BBA

This works well and fast, but what if the sub-nodes, got sub-nodes of its
own? And those sub-nodes might have more sub-nodes... What if you
don't know beforehand how many there will be? A method to solve this
is the use of recursion.

def list_tree_names(node):
for child in get_children(node): print (get_name(child))
list_tree_names(node= child)

list_tree_names(node = get_root(tree)) # prints: A, AA, AB, B, BA, BB,

BBA
Perhaps you wish to not print, but return a flat list of all node names.
This can be done by passing a rolling list as a parameter.

def list_tree_names(node, lst= []):

for child in get_children(node): lst.append(get_name(child))
list_tree_names(node= child, lst= lst)

return lst
list_tree_names(node = get_root(tree))
# returns ['A', 'AA', 'AB', 'B', 'BA', 'BB', 'BBA']

Section 86.3: Sum of numbers from 1 to n

If I wanted to find out the sum of numbers from 1 to n where n is a
natural number, I can do 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... + (several hours later) + n.
Alternatively, I could write a for loop:
n=0
for i in range ( 1 , n+ 1 ): n + = i
Or I could use a technique known as recursion:
def recursion(n):
if n == 1 :
return 1
return n + recursion(n - 1 )
Recursion has advantages over the above two methods. Recursion takes
less time than writing out 1 + 2 + 3 for a sum from 1 to 3. For recursion( 4
recursion can be used to work backwards:
Function calls: ( 4 -> 4 + 3 -> 4 + 3 + 2 -> 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 -> 10 )
Whereas the for loop is working strictly forwards: ( 1 -> 1 + 2 -> 1 + 2 + 3
-> 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 -> 10 ). Sometimes the recursive solution is simpler than
the iterative solution. This is evident when implementing a reversal of a
linked list.

Section 86.4: Increasing the Maximum Recursion Depth

There is a limit to the depth of possible recursion, which depends on the
Python implementation. When the limit is reached, a RuntimeError
exception is raised:
RuntimeError : Maximum Recursion Depth Exceeded
Here's a sample of a program that would cause this error:
def cursing(depth):
try :
cursing(depth + 1 ) # actually, re-cursing

except RuntimeError as RE:

print ('I recursed {} times!' .format(depth)) cursing(0 )
# Out: I recursed 1083 times!

It is possible to change the recursion depth limit by using

sys .setrecursionlimit(limit)
You can check what the current parameters of the limit are by running:
sys .getrecursionlimit()
Running the same method above with our new limit we get

sys .setrecursionlimit(2000 ) cursing(0 )

# Out: I recursed 1997 times!

From Python 3.5, the exception is a RecursionError, which is derived

from RuntimeError.

Section 86.5: Tail Recursion - Bad Practice

When the only thing returned from a function is a recursive call, it is

referred to as tail recursion.
Here's an example countdown written using tail recursion:
def countdown(n):
if n == 0 :
print "Blastoff!"

else :
print n
countdown(n1 )

Any computation that can be made using iteration can also be made
using recursion. Here is a version of find_max written using tail
recursion:
def find_max(seq , max_so_far):
if not seq:
return max_so_far

if max_so_far < seq[0 ]:

return find_max(seq[1 :], seq[0 ])
else :
return find_max(seq[1 :], max_so_far)

Tail recursion is considered a bad practice in Python, since the Python

compiler does not handle optimization for tail recursive calls. The
recursive solution in cases like this use more system resources than the
equivalent iterative solution.

Section 86.6: Tail Recursion Optimization Through Stack

Introspection

By default Python's recursion stack cannot exceed 1000 frames. This can
be changed by setting the sys .setrecursionlimit(15000 ) which is faster
however, this method consumes more memory. Instead, we can also solve
the Tail Recursion problem using stack introspection.

#!/usr/bin/env python2.4
# This program shows off a python decorator which implements tail call
optimization. It # does this by throwing an exception if it is its own
grandparent, and catching such # exceptions to recall the stack.

import sys

class TailRecurseException:
def __init__ (self , args, kwargs): self .args = args
self .kwargs = kwargs

def tail_call_optimized(g):
"""
This function decorates a function with tail call optimization. It does this
by throwing an exception if it is its own grandparent, and catching such
exceptions to fake the tail call optimization.

This function fails if the decorated function recurses in a non-tail

context. """

def func(*args, **kwargs):

f = sys ._getframe()
if f.f_back and f.f_back.f_back and f.f_back.f_back.f_code == f.f_code:

raise TailRecurseException(args, kwargs)

else :
while 1 :
try :
return g(*args, **kwargs) except TailRecurseException, e: args = e.args
kwargs = e.kwargs
func.__doc__ = g.__doc__
return func

To optimize the recursive functions, we can use the @ tail_call_optimized

decorator to call our function. Here's a few of the common recursion
examples using the decorator described above:
Factorial Example:

@ tail_call_optimized
def factorial(n, acc= 1 ):
"calculate a factorial"
if n == 0 :
return acc
return factorial(n1 , n*acc)

print factorial(10000 )
# prints a big, big number,
# but doesn't hit the recursion limit.

Fibonacci Example:
@ tail_call_optimized
def fib(i , current = 0 , next = 1 ):
if i == 0 :

return current
else :
return fib(i - 1 , next, current + next)

print fib(10000 )
# also prints a big number,
# but doesn't hit the recursion limit.

Chapter 87: Type Hints

Section 87.1: Adding types to a function

Let's take an example of a function which receives two arguments and

returns a value indicating their sum:
def two_sum(a , b):
return a + b
By looking at this code, one can not safely and without doubt indicate the
type of the arguments for function two_sum. It works both when
supplied with int values:
print (two_sum( 2 , 1 )) # result: 3
and with strings:
print (two_sum( "a" , "b" )) # result: "ab"
and with other values, such as list s, tuple s et cetera.
Due to this dynamic nature of python types, where many are applicable
for a given operation, any type checker would not be able to reasonably
assert whether a call for this function should be allowed or not.
To assist our type checker we can now provide type hints for it in the
Function definition indicating the type that we allow.
To indicate that we only want to allow int types we can change our
function definition to look like:
def two_sum(a: int , b: int ):
return a + b
Annotations follow the argument name and are separated by a :
character.
Similarly, to indicate only str types are allowed, we'd change our function
to specify it:
def two_sum(a: str , b: str ):
return a + b

Apart from specifying the type of the arguments, one could also indicate
the return value of a function call. This is done by adding the ->
character followed by the type after the closing parenthesis in the
argument list but before the : at the end of the function declaration:

def two_sum(a: int , b: int ) > int :

return a + b
Now we've indicated that the return value when calling two_sum should
be of type int . Similarly we can define appropriate values for str , float , list
set and others.
Although type hints are mostly used by type checkers and IDEs,
sometimes you may need to retrieve them. This can be done using the
__annotations__ special attribute:
two_sum.__annotations__
# {'a': <class 'int'>, 'b': <class 'int'>, 'return': <class 'int'>}
Section 87.2: NamedTuple

Creating a namedtuple with type hints is done using the function

NamedTuple from the typing module:
import typing
Point = typing.NamedTuple( 'Point' , [( 'x' , int ) , ( 'y' , int )])
Note that the name of the resulting type is the first argument to the
function, but it should be assigned to a variable with the same name to
ease the work of type checkers.

Section 87.3: Generic Types

The typing. TypeVar is a generic type factory. It's primary goal is to serve
as a parameter/placeholder for generic function/class/method
annotations:
import typing
T = typing.TypeVar( "T" )

def get_first_element(l: typing.Sequence[T]) > T:

"""Gets the first element of a sequence."""
return l[0 ]

Section 87.4: Variables and Attributes

Variables are annotated using comments:

x = 3 # type: int
x = negate(x)
x = 'a type-checker might catch this error'

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.6

Starting from Python 3.6, there is also new syntax for variable
annotations . The code above might use the form
x: int = 3
Unlike with comments, it is also possible to just add a type hint to a
variable that was not previously declared, without setting a value to it:
y: int
Additionally if these are used in the module or the class level, the type
hints can be retrieved using typing.get_type_hints(class_or_module):

class Foo:
x: int
y: str = 'abc'

print (typing.get_type_hints(Foo))
# ChainMap({'x': <class 'int'>, 'y': <class 'str'>}, {})
Alternatively, they can be accessed by using the __annotations__ special
variable or attribute:
x: int
print (__annotations__)
# {'x': <class 'int'>}

class C:
s: str
print (C.__annotations__)
# {'s': <class 'str'>}

Section 87.5: Class Members and Methods

class A:
x = None # type: float
def __init__ (self , x: float ) > None :

"""
self should not be annotated
init should be annotated to return None
"""
self .x = x

@ classmethod
def from_int(cls, x: int ) > 'A' :
"""
cls should not be annotated
Use forward reference to refer to current class with string literal 'A'
"""
return cls(float (x))

Forward reference of the current class is needed since annotations are

evaluated when the function is defined. Forward references can also be
used when referring to a class that would cause a circular import if
imported.

Section 87.6: Type hints for keyword arguments

def hello_world(greeting: str = 'Hello' ):
print (greeting + ' world!' )
Note the spaces around the equal sign as opposed to how keyword
arguments are usually styled.

Chapter 88: Exceptions

Errors detected during execution are called exceptions and are not
unconditionally fatal. Most exceptions are not handled by programs; it is
possible to write programs that handle selected exceptions. There are
specific features in Python to deal with exceptions and exception logic.
Furthermore, exceptions have a rich type hierarchy, all inheriting from
the BaseException type.

Section 88.1: Catching Exceptions

Use try ... except : to catch exceptions. You should specify as precise an
exception as you can:

try :
x=5/0
except ZeroDivisionError as e:
# `e` is the exception object
print ("Got a divide by zero! The exception was:" , e)
# handle exceptional case
x=0
finally :
print "The END"
# it runs no matter what execute.

The exception class that is specified - in this case, ZeroDivisionError -

catches any exception that is of that class or of any subclass of that
exception.
For example, ZeroDivisionError is a subclass of ArithmeticError :
>>> ZeroDivisionError .__bases__ ( < class 'ArithmeticError' >, )
And so, the following will still catch the ZeroDivisionError :

try : 5 / 0
except ArithmeticError :
print ("Got arithmetic error" )

Section 88.2: Do not catch everything!

While it's often tempting to catch every Exception :

try :
very_difficult_function()
except Exception :
# log / try to reconnect / exit gratiously
finally :
print "The END"
# it runs no matter what execute.

Or even everything (that includes BaseException and all its children

including Exception ):

try : even_more_difficult_function()
except :
pass # do whatever needed

In most cases it's bad practice. It might catch more than intended, such
as SystemExit , KeyboardInterrupt and MemoryError - each of which
should generally be handled differently than usual system or logic errors.
It also means there's no clear understanding for what the internal code
may do wrong and how to recover properly from that condition. If
you're catching every error, you won't know what error occurred or how
to fix it.

This is more commonly referred to as 'bug masking' and should be

avoided. Let your program crash instead of silently failing or even worse,
failing at deeper level of execution. (Imagine it's a transactional system)
Usually these constructs are used at the very outer level of the program,
and will log the details of the error so that the bug can be fixed, or the
error can be handled more specifically.

Section 88.3: Re-raising exceptions

Sometimes you want to catch an exception just to inspect it, e.g. for
logging purposes. After the inspection, you want the exception to
continue propagating as it did before.
In this case, simply use the raise statement with no parameters.

try :
5/0
except ZeroDivisionError :
print ("Got an error" )
raise

Keep in mind, though, that someone further up in the caller stack can
still catch the exception and handle it somehow. The done output could
be a nuisance in this case because it will happen in any case (caught or
not caught). So it might be a better idea to raise a different exception,
containing your comment about the situation as well as the original
exception:

try : 5 / 0
except ZeroDivisionError as e:
raise ZeroDivisionError ("Got an error" , e)

But this has the drawback of reducing the exception trace to exactly this
raise while the raise without argument retains the original exception trace.
In Python 3 you can keep the original stack by using the raise - from
syntax: raise ZeroDivisionError ( "Got an error" ) from e
Section 88.4: Catching multiple exceptions

There are a few ways to catch multiple exceptions .

The first is by creating a tuple of the exception types you wish to catch
and handle in the same manner. This example will cause the code to
ignore KeyError and AttributeError exceptions.

try :
d = {}
a = d[1 ]
b = d.non_existing_field

except ( KeyError , AttributeError ) as e:

print ( "A KeyError or an AttributeError exception has been caught." )

If you wish to handle different exceptions in different ways, you can

provide a separate exception block for each type. In this example, we still
catch the KeyError and AttributeError , but handle the exceptions in
different manners.

try : d = {}
a = d[1 ]
b = d.non_existing_field

except KeyError as e:
print ("A KeyError has occurred. Exception message:" , e)
except AttributeError as e:
print ("An AttributeError has occurred. Exception message:" , e)

Section 88.5: Exception Hierarchy

Exception handling occurs based on an exception hierarchy, determined

by the inheritance structure of the exception classes.
For example, IOError and OSError are both subclasses of
EnvironmentError . Code that catches an IOError will not catch an
OSError . However, code that catches an EnvironmentError will catch
both IOError s and OSError s.
The hierarchy of built-in exceptions:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

BaseException
+-- SystemExit
+-- KeyboardInterrupt
+-- GeneratorExit
+-- Exception
+-- StopIteration
+-- StandardError
| +-- BufferError
| +-- ArithmeticError
| | +-- FloatingPointError
| | +-- OverflowError
| | +-- ZeroDivisionError
| +-- AssertionError
| +-- AttributeError
| +-- EnvironmentError
| | +-- IOError
| | +-- OSError
| | +-- WindowsError (Windows)
| | +-- VMSError (VMS)
| +-- EOFError
| +-- ImportError
| +-- LookupError
| | +-- IndexError
| | +-- KeyError
| +-- MemoryError
| +-- NameError
| | +-- UnboundLocalError
| +-- ReferenceError
| +-- RuntimeError
| | +-- NotImplementedError
| +-- SyntaxError
| | +-- IndentationError
| | +-- TabError
| +-- SystemError
| +-- TypeError
| +-- ValueError
| +-- UnicodeError
| +-- UnicodeDecodeError | +-- UnicodeEncodeError | +--
UnicodeTranslateError +-- Warning
+-- DeprecationWarning
+-- PendingDeprecationWarning +-- RuntimeWarning
+-- SyntaxWarning
+-- UserWarning
+-- FutureWarning
+-- ImportWarning
+-- UnicodeWarning
+-- BytesWarning

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

BaseException
+-- SystemExit
+-- KeyboardInterrupt
+-- GeneratorExit
+-- Exception
+-- StopIteration
+-- StopAsyncIteration
+-- ArithmeticError
| +-- FloatingPointError
| +-- OverflowError
| +-- ZeroDivisionError
+-- AssertionError
+-- AttributeError
+-- BufferError
+-- EOFError
+-- ImportError
+-- LookupError
| +-- IndexError
| +-- KeyError
+-- MemoryError
+-- NameError
| +-- UnboundLocalError
+-- OSError
| +-- BlockingIOError
| +-- ChildProcessError
| +-- ConnectionError
| | +-- BrokenPipeError
| | +-- ConnectionAbortedError | | +-- ConnectionRefusedError | | +--
ConnectionResetError | +-- FileExistsError
| +-- FileNotFoundError
| +-- InterruptedError
| +-- IsADirectoryError
| +-- NotADirectoryError
| +-- PermissionError
| +-- ProcessLookupError
| +-- TimeoutError
+-- ReferenceError
+-- RuntimeError
| +-- NotImplementedError | +-- RecursionError
+-- SyntaxError
| +-- IndentationError
| +-- TabError
+-- SystemError
+-- TypeError
+-- ValueError
| +-- UnicodeError
| +-- UnicodeDecodeError | +-- UnicodeEncodeError | +--
UnicodeTranslateError +-- Warning
+-- DeprecationWarning
+-- PendingDeprecationWarning +-- RuntimeWarning
+-- SyntaxWarning
+-- UserWarning
+-- FutureWarning
+-- ImportWarning
+-- UnicodeWarning
+-- BytesWarning
+-- ResourceWarning
Section 88.6: Else

Code in an else block will only be run if no exceptions were raised by the
code in the try block. This is useful if you have some code you don’t want
to run if an exception is thrown, but you don’t want exceptions thrown
by that code to be caught.

For example:

try :
data = {1 : 'one' , 2 : 'two' } print (data[1 ])

except KeyError as e:
print ('key not found' )
else :
raise ValueError ()
# Output: one
# Output: ValueError

Note that this kind of else : cannot be combined with an if starting the
else-clause to an elif . If you have a following if it needs to stay indented
below that else ::

try : ...
except ...: ...
else :
if ...: ... elif ...: ... else :
...

Section 88.7: Raising Exceptions

If your code encounters a condition it doesn't know how to handle, such
as an incorrect parameter, it should raise the appropriate exception.
def even_the_odds(odds):
if odds % 2 != 1 :
raise ValueError ( "Did not get an odd number" )
return odds + 1
Section 88.8: Creating custom exception types

Create a class inheriting from Exception :

class FooException(Exception ):
pass
try :
raise FooException("insert description here" )
except FooException:
print ("A FooException was raised." )

or another exception type:

class NegativeError( ValueError ): pass

def foo(x):
# function that only accepts positive values of x if x < 0 :

raise NegativeError( "Cannot process negative numbers" )

... # rest of function body

try :
result = foo(int (input ("Enter a positive integer: " ))) # raw_input in
Python 2.x except NegativeError:
print ("You entered a negative number!" )
else :
print ("The result was " + str (result))

Section 88.9: Practical examples of exception handling

User input
Imagine you want a user to enter a number via input . You want to ensure
that the input is a number. You can use try / except for this:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0 while True :
try :
nb = int ( input ( 'Enter a number: ' )) break
except ValueError :
print ( 'This is not a number, try again.' )
Note: Python 2.x would use raw_input instead; the function input exists in
Python 2.x but has different semantics. In the above example, input would
also accept expressions such as 2 + 2 which evaluate to a number.
If the input could not be converted to an integer, a ValueError is raised.
You can catch it with except . If no exception is raised, break jumps out of
the loop. After the loop, nb contains an integer.
Dictionaries
Imagine you are iterating over a list of consecutive integers, like range (n),
and you have a list of dictionaries d that contains information about
things to do when you encounter some particular integers, say skip the
d[i] next ones .
d = [{ 7 : 3 } , { 25 : 9 } , { 38 : 5 }]

for i in range (len (d)): do_stuff(i)

try :

dic = d[i]
i += dic[i]
except KeyError :

i+=1
A KeyError will be raised when you try to get a value from a dictionary
for a key that doesn’t exist.

Section 88.10: Exceptions are Objects too

Exceptions are just regular Python objects that inherit from the built-in
BaseException. A Python script can use the raise statement to interrupt
execution, causing Python to print a stack trace of the call stack at that
point and a representation of the exception instance. For example:

>>> def failing_function():

... raise ValueError ('Example error!' ) >>> failing_function()
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module > File "<stdin>" , line 2 , in failing_function
ValueError : Example error !
which says that a ValueError with the message 'Example error!' was raised
by our failing_function(), which was executed in the interpreter.
Calling code can choose to handle any and all types of exception that a
call can raise:

>>> try :
... failing_function()
... except ValueError :
... print ('Handled the error' ) Handled the error

You can get hold of the exception objects by assigning them in the except
... part of the exception handling code:

>>> try :
... failing_function()
... except ValueError as e:
... print ('Caught exception' , repr (e)) Caught exception ValueError
('Example error!' , )

A complete list of built-in Python exceptions along with their

descriptions can be found in the Python Documentation:
https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/exceptions.html . And here is the full
list arranged hierarchically: Exception Hierarchy.

Section 88.11: Running clean-up code with finally

Sometimes, you may want something to occur regardless of whatever
exception happened, for example, if you have to clean up some resources.
The finally block of a try clause will happen regardless of whether any
exceptions were raised.
resource = allocate_some_expensive_resource() try :
do_stuff( resource )

except SomeException as e:
log_error(e)
raise # re-raise the error

finally :
free_expensive_resource( resource ) This pattern is often better handled
with context managers (using the with statement).

Section 88.12: Chain exceptions with raise from

In the process of handling an exception, you may want to raise another

exception. For example, if you get an IOError while reading from a file,
you may want to raise an application-specific error to present to the
users of your library, instead.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

You can chain exceptions to show how the handling of exceptions
proceeded:

>>> try :
5/0
except ZeroDivisionError as e:
raise ValueError ("Division failed" ) from e

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>" , line 2 , in < module>
ZeroDivisionError : division by zero

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>" , line 4 , in < module>
ValueError : Division failed

Chapter 89: Raise Custom Errors / Exceptions

Python has many built-in exceptions which force your program to output
an error when something in it goes wrong.
However, sometimes you may need to create custom exceptions that
serve your purpose.
In Python, users can define such exceptions by creating a new class. This
exception class has to be derived, either directly or indirectly, from
Exception class. Most of the built-in exceptions are also derived from this
class.
Section 89.1: Custom Exception

Here, we have created a user-defined exception called CustomError

which is derived from the Exception class. This new exception can be
raised, like other exceptions, using the raise statement with an optional
error message.
class CustomError( Exception ):
pass
x=1
if x == 1 :
raise CustomError( 'This is custom error' )
Output:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "error_custom.py", line 8, in raise

CustomError('This is custom error') __main__.CustomError: This is
custom error

Section 89.2: Catch custom Exception

This example shows how to catch custom Exception

class CustomError( Exception ):
pass

try :
raise CustomError('Can you catch me ?' )
except CustomError as e:
print ('Catched CustomError :{}' .format(e))
except Exception as e:
print ('Generic exception: {}' .format(e))

Output: Catched CustomError :Can you catch me ?

Chapter 90: Commonwealth Exceptions

Here in Stack Overflow we often see duplicates talking about the same
errors: "ImportError: No module named '??????' , SyntaxError :
invalid syntax or NameError : name '???' is not defined. This is an effort
to reduce them and to have some documentation to link to.

Section 90.1: Other Errors

AssertError
The assert statement exists in almost every programming language. When
you do:
assert condition
or:
assert condition , message
It's equivalent to this:
if __debug__:
if not condition: raise AssertionError (message)
Assertions can include an optional message, and you can disable them
when you're done debugging.

Note : the built-in variable debug is True under normal circumstances,

False when optimization is requested (command line option -O).
Assignments to debug are illegal. The value for the built-in variable is
determined when the interpreter starts.

KeyboardInterrupt
Error raised when the user presses the interrupt key, normally Ctrl + C
or del .
ZeroDivisionError
You tried to calculate 1 / 0 which is undefined. See this example to find the
divisors of a number:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0 Version ≤ 2.7
div = float ( raw_input ( "Divisors of: " ))
for x in xrange (div+ 1 ): #includes the number itself and zero
if div/x == div//x:
print x , "is a divisor of" , div
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
div = int ( input ( "Divisors of: " ))
for x in range (div+ 1 ): #includes the number itself and zero
if div/x == div//x:
print (x , "is a divisor of" , div)
It raises ZeroDivisionError because the for loop assigns that value to x.
Instead it should be:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0 Version ≤ 2.7
div = float ( raw_input ( "Divisors of: " ))
for x in xrange ( 1 , div+ 1 ): #includes the number itself but not zero if div/x
div//x:
print x , "is a divisor of" , div Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
div = int ( input ( "Divisors of: " ))
for x in range ( 1 , div+ 1 ): #includes the number itself but not zero if div/x
div//x:
print (x , "is a divisor of" , div)

Section 90.2: NameError: name '???' is not defined

Is raised when you tried to use a variable, method or function that is not
initialized (at least not before). In other words, it is raised when a
requested local or global name is not found. It's possible that you
misspelt the name of the object or forgot to import something. Also
maybe it's in another scope. We'll cover those with separate examples.

It's simply not defined nowhere in the code

It's possible that you forgot to initialize it, especially if it is a constant
foo # This variable is not defined bar() # This function is not defined
Maybe it's defined later: baz()
def baz(): pass
Or it wasn't import ed: #needs import math

def sqrt():
x = float (input ("Value: " )) return math .sqrt(x)

Python scopes and the LEGB Rule:

The so-called LEGB Rule talks about the Python scopes. Its name is
based on the different scopes, ordered by the correspondent priorities:
Local → Enclosed → Global → Built in .

L ocal: Variables not declared global or assigned in a function.

Enclosing: Variables defined in a function that is wrapped inside another
function. Global: Variables declared global, or assigned at the top-level
of a file. Built-in: Variables preassigned in the built-in names module.

As an example:

for i in range (4 ): d = i * 2
print (d)
d is accessible because the for loop does not mark a new scope, but if it
did, we would have an error and its behavior would be similar to:

def noaccess():
for i in range ( 4 ): d = i * 2
noaccess()
print (d)
Python says NameError : name 'd' is not defined

Section 90.3: TypeErrors

These exceptions are caused when the type of some object should be
different
TypeError: [definition/method] takes ? positional arguments but ? was
given
A function or method was called with more (or less) arguments than the
ones it can accept.
Example
If more arguments are given:
def foo(a): return a
foo(a , b , c , d) #And a,b,c,d are defined
If less arguments are given:
def foo(a , b , c , d): return a + = b + c + d
foo(a) #And a is defined
Note: if you want use an unknown number of arguments, you can use
*args or **kwargs. See *args and **kwargs
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for [operand]: '???' and '???'
Some types cannot be operated together, depending on the operand.
Example
For example: + is used to concatenate and add, but you can't use any of
them for both types. For instance, trying to make a set by concatenating
(+ing) 'set1' and 'tuple1' gives the error. Code:
set1 , tuple1 = { 1 , 2 } , ( 3 , 4 ) a = set1 + tuple1
Some types (eg: int and string ) use both + but for different things:
b = 400 + 'foo'
Or they may not be even used for anything:
c = [ "a" , "b" ] - [ 1 , 2 ]
But you can for example add a float to an int :
d = 1 + 1.0
TypeError: '???' object is not iterable/subscriptable:

For an object to be iterable it can take sequential indexes starting from

zero until the indexes are no longer valid and a IndexError is raised
(More technically: it has to have an __iter__ method which returns an
__iterator__, or which defines a __getitem__ method that does what was
previously mentioned).

Example
Here we are saying that bar is the zeroth item of 1. Nonsense:
foo = 1
bar = foo[ 0 ]
This is a more discrete version: In this example for tries to set x to
amount[ 0 ], the first item in an iterable but it can't because amount is an
int:
amount = 10
for x in amount: print (x)
TypeError: '???' object is not callable
You are defining a variable and calling it later (like what you do with a
function or method)
Example
foo = "notAFunction" foo()

Section 90.4: Syntax Error on good code

The gross majority of the time a SyntaxError which points to an
uninteresting line means there is an issue on the line before it (in this
example, it's a missing parenthesis):
def my_print():
x = (1 + 1
print (x)

Returns

File "<input>" , line 3 print (x)

^

SyntaxError : invalid syntax

The most common reason for this issue is mismatched
parentheses/brackets, as the example shows.
There is one major caveat for print statements in Python 3:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

>>> print "hello world" File "<stdin>" , line 1 print "hello world" ^
SyntaxError : invalid syntax

Because the print statement was replaced with the print () function , so you
want: print ( "hello world" ) # Note this is valid for both Py2 & Py3

Section 90.5: IndentationErrors (or indentation SyntaxErrors)

In most other languages indentation is not compulsory, but in Python

(and other languages: early versions of FORTRAN, Makefiles,
Whitespace (esoteric language), etc.) that is not the case, what can be
confusing if you come from another language, if you were copying code
from an example to your own, or simply if you are new.

IndentationError/SyntaxError: unexpected indent

This exception is raised when the indentation level increases with no
reason.
Example
There is no reason to increase the level here:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0 Version ≤ 2.7
print "This line is ok"
print "This line isn't ok"
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
print ( "This line is ok" )
print ( "This line isn't ok" )
Here there are two errors: the last one and that the indentation does not
match any indentation level. However just one is shown:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0 Version ≤ 2.7 print "This line is ok"
print "This line isn't ok" Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
print ( "This line is ok" )
print ( "This line isn't ok" ) IndentationError/SyntaxError: unindent does
not match any outer indentation level
Appears you didn't unindent completely.
Example
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0 Version ≤ 2.7 def foo():
print "This should be part of foo()" print "ERROR!"
print "This is not a part of foo()" Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
print ( "This line is ok" )
print ( "This line isn't ok" )
IndentationError: expected an indented block
After a colon (and then a new line) the indentation level has to increase.
This error is raised when that didn't happen.
Example if ok:
doStuff()

Note : Use the keyword pass (that makes absolutely nothing) to just put
an if, else , except , class , method or definition but not say what will
happen if called/condition is true (but do it later, or in the case of except
: just do nothing):

def foo(): pass

IndentationError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation
Example
def foo():
if ok:
return "Two != Four != Tab"
return "i don't care i do whatever i want"
How to avoid this error
Don't use tabs. It is discouraged by PEP8, the style guide for Python.
1. Set your editor to use 4 spaces for indentation.
2. Make a search and replace to replace all tabs with 4 spaces.
3. Make sure your editor is set to display tabs as 8 spaces, so that you can
realize easily that error and fix it.

See this question if you want to learn more.

Chapter 91: urllib

Section 91.1: HTTP GET

Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

Python 2
import urllib
response = urllib .urlopen( 'http://stackoverflow.com/documentation/' )
Using urllib .urlopen() will return a response object, which can be
handled similar to a file.
print response. code
# Prints: 200
The response. code represents the http return value. 200 is OK, 404 is
NotFound, etc.
print response.read()
'<!DOCTYPE html> \r\n <html> \r\n <head> \r\n\r\n <title>Documentation
- Stack. etc'
response.read() and response.readlines() can be used to read the actual
html file returned from the request. These methods operate similarly to
file .read*
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
Python 3
import urllib .request
print ( urllib .request.urlopen( "http://stackoverflow.com/documentation/"
))
# Prints: <http.client.HTTPResponse at 0x7f37a97e3b00>
response = urllib .request.urlopen(
"http://stackoverflow.com/documentation/" )

print (response.code )
# Prints: 200
print (response.read())
# Prints: b'<!DOCTYPE
html>\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n\r\n<title>Documentation - Stack
Overflow</title>

The module has been updated for Python 3.x, but use cases remain
basically the same. urllib .request.urlopen will return a similar file-like
object.

Section 91.2: HTTP POST

To POST data pass the encoded query arguments as data to urlopen()

Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

Python 2
import urllib
query_parms = {'username' :'stackoverflow' , 'password' :'me.me' }
encoded_parms = urllib .urlencode(query_parms)
response = urllib .urlopen("https://stackoverflow.com/users/login" ,
encoded_parms) response.code
# Output: 200
response.read()
# Output: '<!DOCTYPE html>\r\n<html>\r\n<head>\r\n\r\n<title>Log In -
Stack Overflow'

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

Python 3
import urllib
query_parms = {'username' :'stackoverflow' , 'password' :'me.me' }
encoded_parms = urllib .parse.urlencode(query_parms).encode('utf-8' )
response = urllib
.request.urlopen("https://stackoverflow.com/users/login" ,
encoded_parms) response.code
# Output: 200
response.read()
# Output: b'<!DOCTYPE html>\r\n<html>....etc'
Section 91.3: Decode received bytes according to content type
encoding

The received bytes have to be decoded with the correct character

encoding to be interpreted as text:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
import urllib .request
response = urllib .request.urlopen( "http://stackoverflow.com/" )
data = response.read()
encoding = response.info().get_content_charset()
html = data.decode(encoding)
Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

import urllib2
response = urllib2 .urlopen("http://stackoverflow.com/" )
data = response.read()

encoding = response.info().getencoding()
html = data.decode(encoding)

Chapter 92: Web scraping with Python

Web scraping is an automated, programmatic process through which
data can be constantly 'scraped' off webpages. Also known as screen
scraping or web harvesting, web scraping can provide instant data from
any publicly accessible webpage. On some websites, web scraping may be
illegal.

Section 92.1: Scraping using the Scrapy framework

First you have to set up a new Scrapy project. Enter a directory where
you’d like to store your code and run:
scrapy startproject projectName
To scrape we need a spider. Spiders define how a certain site will be
scraped. Here’s the code for a spider that follows the links to the top
voted questions on StackOverflow and scrapes some data from each page
( source ):
import scrapy

class StackOverflowSpider(scrapy.Spider):
name = 'stackoverflow' # each spider has a unique name
start_urls = ['http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes' ] # the
parsing starts from a

specific set of urls

def parse( self , response): # for each request this generator yields, its
response is sent to parse_question
for href in response.css( '.question-summary h3 a::attr(href)' ): # do some
scraping stuff

using css selectors to find question urls

full_url = response.urljoin(href.extract())
yield scrapy.Request(full_url, callback= self .parse_question)

def parse_question(self , response):

yield {
'title' : response.css('h1 a::text' ).extract_first(),
'votes' : response.css('.question .vote-count-post::text' ).extract_first(),
'body' : response.css('.question .post-text' ).extract_first(),
'tags' : response.css('.question .post-tag::text' ).extract(),
'link' : response.url,

}
Save your spider classes in the projectName\spiders directory. In this
case projectName\spiders\stackoverflow_spider.py.
Now you can use your spider. For example, try running (in the project's
directory): scrapy crawl stackoverflow

Section 92.2: Scraping using Selenium WebDriver

Some websites don’t like to be scraped. In these cases you may need to
simulate a real user working with a browser. Selenium launches and
controls a web browser.
from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox() # launch Firefox browser
browser.get( 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes' ) # load url
title = browser.find_element_by_css_selector( 'h1' ).text # page title (first h1
element)
questions = browser.find_elements_by_css_selector( '.question-summary'
# question list

for question in questions: # iterate over questions

question_title = question.find_element_by_css_selector('.summary h3 a'
).text question_excerpt =
question.find_element_by_css_selector('.summary .excerpt' ).text
question_vote = question.find_element_by_css_selector('.stats .vote .votes
.vote-countpost' ).text

print "%s \n %s \n %s votes \n ---------- \n " % (question_title ,

question_excerpt , question_vote)
Selenium can do much more. It can modify browser’s cookies, fill in
forms, simulate mouse clicks, take screenshots of web pages, and run
custom JavaScript.

Section 92.3: Basic example of using requests and lxml to

scrape some data
# For Python 2 compatibility.
from __future__ import print_function
import lxml.html import requests

def main():
r = requests.get("https://httpbin.org" )
html_source = r.text
root_element = lxml.html.fromstring(html_source) # Note
root_element.xpath() gives a *list* of results. # XPath specifies a path to
the element we want.
page_title = root_element.xpath('/html/head/title/text()' )[0 ] print
(page_title)

if __name__ == '__main__' : main()

Section 92.4: Maintaining web-scraping session with requests

It is a good idea to maintain a web-scraping session to persist the cookies

and other parameters. Additionally, it can result into a performance
improvement because requests.Session reuses the underlying TCP
connection to a host:
import requests

with requests.Session() as session:

# all requests through session now have User-Agent header set
session.headers = {'User-Agent' : 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS
X 10_11_4)

AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103

Safari/537.36' }
# set cookies
session.get( 'http://httpbin.org/cookies/set?key=value' )

# get cookies
response = session.get('http://httpbin.org/cookies' )
print (response.text)

Section 92.5: Scraping using BeautifulSoup4

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

import requests
# Use the requests module to obtain a page
res = requests.get( 'https://www.codechef.com/problems/easy' )
# Create a BeautifulSoup object
page = BeautifulSoup(res.text , 'lxml' ) # the text field contains the source of
the page
# Now use a CSS selector in order to get the table containing the list of
problems datatable_tags = page. select ( 'table.dataTable' ) # The problems are
in the <table> tag,

# with class "dataTable" # We extract the first tag from the list, since that's
what we desire
datatable = datatable_tags[0 ]
# Now since we want problem names, they are contained in <b> tags, which
are # directly nested under <a> tags
prob_tags = datatable.select ('a > b' )
prob_names = [tag.getText().strip() for tag in prob_tags]

print prob_names

Section 92.6: Simple web content download with urllib.request

The standard library module urllib .request can be used to download web
content:
from urllib .request import urlopen
response = urlopen( 'http://stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes' )
data = response.read()

# The received bytes should usually be decoded according the response's

character set encoding = response.info().get_content_charset()
html = data.decode(encoding)

A similar module is also available in Python 2.

Section 92.7: Modify Scrapy user agent

Sometimes the default Scrapy user agent ( "Scrapy/VERSION
(+http://scrapy.org)" ) is blocked by the host. To change the default user
agent open settings.py, uncomment and edit the following line to
whatever you want.
#USER_AGENT = 'projectName (+http://www.yourdomain.com)'
For example
USER_AGENT = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_4)
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103
Safari/537.36'

Section 92.8: Scraping with curl

imports:
from subprocess import Popen , PIPE
from lxml import etree
from io import StringIO
Downloading:

user_agent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_6)

AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.95
Safari/537.36'
url = 'http://stackoverflow.com'
get = Popen(['curl' , '-s' , '-A' , user_agent, url], stdout= PIPE)
result = get.stdout.read().decode('utf8' )

-s: silent download

-A: user agent flag
Parsing:
tree = etree.parse( StringIO (result) , etree. HTMLParser ()) divs = tree.xpath(
'//div' )

Chapter 93: HTML Parsing

Section 93.1: Using CSS selectors in BeautifulSoup

BeautifulSoup has a limited support for CSS selectors , but covers most
commonly used ones. Use SELECT () method to find multiple elements
and select_one () to find a single element.
Basic example:
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

data = """
<ul>
<li class="item">item1</li> <li class="item">item2</li> <li
class="item">item3</li>
</ul>
"""

soup = BeautifulSoup(data , "html.parser" )

for item in soup. select ( "li.item" ): print (item.get_text())
Prints:

item1
item2
item3

Section 93.2: PyQuery

pyquery is a jquery-like library for python. It has very well support for
css selectors.
from pyquery import PyQuery

html = """
<h1>Sales</h1>
<table id="table">
<tr>

<td>Lorem</td> <td>46</td> </tr>

<tr>
<td>Ipsum</td>
<td>12</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td>Dolor</td>
<td>27</td> </tr>
<tr>
<td>Sit</td>
<td>90</td> </tr>
</table>
"""

doc = PyQuery(html)
title = doc( 'h1' ).text()
print title
table_data = []

rows = doc('#table > tr' )

for row in rows:
name = PyQuery(row).find('td' ).eq(0 ).text()
value = PyQuery(row).find('td' ).eq(1 ).text()

print "%s \t %s" % (name , value)

Section 93.3: Locate a text after an element in BeautifulSoup

Imagine you have the following HTML:

<div>
<label>Name:</label>
John Smith

</div>
And you need to locate the text "John Smith" after the label element.
In this case, you can locate the label element by text and then use .
next_sibling property :
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

data = """
<div>
<label>Name:</label> John Smith
</div>
"""

soup = BeautifulSoup(data , "html.parser" )

label = soup.find( "label" , text = "Name:" ) print (label.next_sibling.strip())
Prints John Smith.

Chapter 94: Manipulating XML

Section 94.1: Opening and reading using an ElementTree

Import the ElementTree object, open the relevant .xml file and get the
root tag:

import xml .etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse("yourXMLfile.xml" )
root = tree.getroot()

There are a few ways to search through the tree. First is by iteration:
for child in root:
print (child.tag , child.attrib)
Otherwise you can reference specific locations like a list:
print (root[ 0 ][ 1 ].text)
To search for specific tags by name, use the .find or .findall:
print (root.findall( "myTag" ))
print (root[ 0 ].find( "myOtherTag" ))

Section 94.2: Create and Build XML Documents

Import Element Tree module
import xml .etree.ElementTree as ET
Element() function is used to create XML elements
p = ET.Element( 'parent' )
SubElement() function used to create sub-elements to a give element
c = ET.SubElement(p , 'child1' )
dump() function is used to dump xml elements.

ET.dump(p)
# Output will be like this
#<parent><child1 /></parent>

If you want to save to a file create a xml tree with ElementTree()

function and to save to a file use write() method
tree = ET.ElementTree(p)
tree.write( "output.xml" )
Comment() function is used to insert comments in xml file.
comment = ET.Comment( 'user comment' )
p.append(comment) #this comment will be appended to parent element

Section 94.3: Modifying an XML File

Import Element Tree module and open xml file, get an xml element
import xml .etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('sample.xml' )
root= tree.getroot()
element = root[0 ] #get first child of root element

Element object can be manipulated by changing its fields, adding and

modifying attributes, adding and removing children
element. set ( 'attribute_name' , 'attribute_value' ) #set the attribute to xml
element element.text = "string_text"
If you want to remove an element use Element.remove() method
root.remove(element)
ElementTree.write() method used to output xml object to xml files.
tree.write( 'output.xml' )

Section 94.4: Searching the XML with XPath

Starting with version 2.7 ElementTree has a better support for XPath
queries. XPath is a syntax to enable you to navigate through an xml like
SQL is used to search through a database. Both find and findall
functions support XPath. The xml below will be used for this example

<Catalog>
<Books>

<Book id = "1" price = "7.95" >

<Title>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</Title> <Author>Philip
K. Dick</Author>

</Book>
<Book id = "5" price = "5.95" >
<Title>The Colour of Magic</Title>
<Author>Terry Pratchett</Author>
</Book>
<Book id = "7" price = "6.95" >
<Title>The Eye of The World</Title>
<Author>Robert Jordan</Author>
</Book>
</Books>
</Catalog>

Searching for all books:

import xml .etree.cElementTree as ET tree = ET.parse('sample.xml' )

tree.findall('Books/Book' )

Searching for the book with title = 'The Colour of Magic':

tree.find( "Books/Book[Title='The Colour of Magic']" ) # always use '' in
the right side of the comparison
Searching for the book with id = 5:
tree.find( "Books/Book[@id='5']" )
# searches with xml attributes must have '@' before the name
Search for the second book:
tree.find( "Books/Book[2]" ) # indexes starts at 1, not 0
Search for the last book:
tree.find( "Books/Book[last()]" )
# 'last' is the only xpath function allowed in ElementTree
Search for all authors:
tree.findall( ".//Author" )
#searches with // must use a relative path

Section 94.5: Opening and reading large XML files using

iterparse (incremental parsing)

Sometimes we don't want to load the entire XML file in order to get the
information we need. In these instances, being able to incrementally load
the relevant sections and then delete them when we are finished is useful.
With the iterparse function you can edit the element tree that is stored
while parsing the XML.

Import the ElementTree object:

import xml .etree.ElementTree as ET
Open the .xml file and iterate over all the elements:
for event , elem in ET.iterparse( "yourXMLfile.xml" ): ... do something ...
Alternatively, we can only look for specific events, such as start/end tags
or namespaces. If this option is omitted (as above), only "end" events are
returned:
events = ( "start" , "end" , "start-ns" , "end-ns" )
for event , elem in ET.iterparse( "yourXMLfile.xml" , events = events): ... do
something ...
Here is the complete example showing how to clear elements from the in-
memory tree when we are finished with them:

for event, elem in ET.iterparse("yourXMLfile.xml" , events= ("start" ,

"end" )): if elem.tag == "record_tag" and event == "end" :
print elem.text
elem.clear()

... do something else ...

Chapter 95: Python Requests Post

Documentation for the Python Requests module in the context of the
HTTP POST method and its corresponding Requests function

Section 95.1: Simple Post

from requests import post
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = { 'key' : 'value' })
Will perform a simple HTTP POST operation. Posted data can be
inmost formats, however key value pairs are most prevalent.
Headers
Headers can be viewed:
print (foo.headers)
An example response:

{ 'Content-Length' : '439' , 'X-Processed-Time' : '0.000802993774414' , 'X-

Powered-By' : 'Flask' , 'Server' : 'meinheld/0.6.1' , 'Connection' : 'keep-
alive' , 'Via' : '1.1 vegur' , 'Access-Control-AllowCredentials' : 'true' , 'Date'
: 'Sun, 21 May 2017 20:56:05 GMT' , 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' : '*'
'Content-Type' : 'application/json' }
Headers can also be prepared before post:

headers = {'Cache-Control' :'max-age=0' ,

'Upgrade-Insecure-Requests' :'1' ,
'User-Agent' :'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like

Gecko) Chrome/54.0.2840.99 Safari/537.36' ,

'Content-Type' :'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' ,
'Accept'
:'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8'
, 'Referer' :'https://www.groupon.com/signup' ,
'Accept-Encoding' :'gzip, deflate, br' ,
'Accept-Language' :'es-ES,es;q=0.8'
}

foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , headers = headers , data = { 'key' : 'value'

Encoding
Encoding can be set and viewed in much the same way:
print (foo.encoding)
'utf-8'
foo.encoding = 'ISO-8859-1'
SSL Verification
Requests by default validates SSL certificates of domains. This can be
overridden:
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = { 'key' : 'value' } , verify = False
Redirection
Any redirection will be followed (e.g. http to https) this can also be
changed:
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = { 'key' : 'value' } , allow_redirects
False )
If the post operation has been redirected, this value can be accessed:
print (foo.url)
A full history of redirects can be viewed: print (foo.history)

Section 95.2: Form Encoded Data

from requests import post

payload = {'key1' : 'value1' ,

'key2' : 'value2'
}

foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = payload)

To pass form encoded data with the post operation, data must be
structured as dictionary and supplied as the data parameter.
If the data does not want to be form encoded, simply pass a string, or
integer to the data parameter.
Supply the dictionary to the json parameter for Requests to format the
data automatically:
from requests import post
payload = { 'key1' : 'value1' , 'key2' : 'value2' } foo = post(
'http://httpbin.org/post' , json = payload)

Section 95.3: File Upload

With the Requests module, it's only necessary to provide a file handle as
opposed to the contents retrieved with .read():
from requests import post
files = { 'file' : open ( 'data.txt' , 'rb' )}
foo = post( 'http://http.org/post' , files = files)
Filename, content_type and headers can also be set:
files = { 'file' : ( 'report.xls' , open ( 'report.xls' , 'rb' ) , 'application/vnd.ms-excel'
, { 'Expires' : '0' })}
foo = requests.post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , files = files)
Strings can also be sent as a file, as long they are supplied as the files
parameter.
Multiple Files
Multiple files can be supplied in much the same way as one file:

multiple_files = [
('images' , ('foo.png' , open ('foo.png' , 'rb' ), 'image/png' )), ('images' ,
('bar.png' , open ('bar.png' , 'rb' ), 'image/png' ))]
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , files = multiple_files)

Section 95.4: Responses

Response codes can be viewed from a post operation:

from requests import post
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = { 'data' : 'value' })
print (foo.status_code)
Returned Data
Accessing data that is returned:
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = { 'data' : 'value' })
print (foo.text)
Raw Responses
In the instances where you need to access the underlying urllib3
response.HTTPResponse object, this can be done by the following:
foo = post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , data = { 'data' : 'value' })
res = foo.raw
print (res.read())

Section 95.5: Authentication

Simple HTTP Authentication
Simple HTTP Authentication can be achieved with the following:
from requests import post
foo = post( 'http://natas0.natas.labs.overthewire.org' , auth = ( 'natas0' ,
'natas0' ))
This is technically short hand for the following:
from requests import post
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth
foo = post( 'http://natas0.natas.labs.overthewire.org' , auth =
HTTPBasicAuth( 'natas0' , 'natas0' )) HTTP Digest Authentication
HTTP Digest Authentication is done in a very similar way, Requests
provides a different object for this:
from requests import post
from requests.auth import HTTPDigestAuth
foo = post( 'http://natas0.natas.labs.overthewire.org' , auth =
HTTPDigestAuth( 'natas0' , 'natas0' ))
Custom Authentication
In some cases the built in authentication mechanisms may not be enough,
imagine this example:

A server is configured to accept authentication if the sender has the

correct user-agent string, a certain header value and supplies the correct
credentials through HTTP Basic Authentication. To achieve this a
custom authentication class should be prepared, subclassing AuthBase,
which is the base for Requests authentication implementations:

from requests.auth import AuthBase

from requests.auth import _basic_auth_str
from requests._internal_utils import to_native_string

class CustomAuth(AuthBase):

def __init__ (self , secret_header, user_agent , username, password): #

setup any auth-related data here
self .secret_header = secret_header
self .user_agent = user_agent
self .username = username
self .password = password

def __call__ (self , r):

# modify and return the request
r.headers['X-Secret' ] = self .secret_header
r.headers['User-Agent' ] = self .user_agent
r.headers['Authorization' ] = _basic_auth_str(self .username, self
.password)

return r
This can then be utilized with the following code:
foo = get( 'http://test.com/admin' , auth = CustomAuth( 'SecretHeader' ,
'CustomUserAgent' , 'user' , 'password' ))

Section 95.6: Proxies

Each request POST operation can be configured to use network proxies
HTTP/S Proxies
from requests import post

proxies = {
'http' : 'http://192.168.0.128:3128' ,
'https' : 'http://192.168.0.127:1080' ,

}
foo = requests.post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , proxies = proxies)
HTTP Basic Authentication can be provided in this manner:
proxies = { 'http' : 'http://user:pass@192.168.0.128:312' } foo = requests.post(
'http://httpbin.org/post' , proxies = proxies)
SOCKS Proxies
The use of socks proxies requires 3rd party dependencies
requests[socks], once installed socks proxies are used in a very similar
way to HTTPBasicAuth:

proxies = {
'http' : 'socks5://user:pass@host:port' , 'https' :
'socks5://user:pass@host:port' }

foo = requests.post( 'http://httpbin.org/post' , proxies = proxies)

Chapter 96: Distribution

Section 96.1: py2app

To use the py2app framework you must install it first. Do this by

opening terminal and entering the following command:
sudo easy_install -U py2app
You can also pip install the packages as:
pip install py2app
Then create the setup file for your python script:
py2applet --make-setup MyApplication.py
Edit the settings of the setup file to your liking, this is the default:
"""
This is a setup.py script generated by py2applet
Usage:
python setup.py py2app
"""

from setuptools import setup

APP = ['test.py' ]
DATA_FILES = []
OPTIONS = {'argv_emulation' : True }

setup(
app= APP,
data_files= DATA_FILES,
options= {'py2app' : OPTIONS},
setup_requires= ['py2app' ],

)
To add an icon file (this file must have a .icns extension), or include
images in your application as reference, change your options as shown:
DATA_FILES = [ 'myInsertedImage.jpg' ]
OPTIONS = { 'argv_emulation' : True , 'iconfile' : 'myCoolIcon.icns' }
Finally enter this into terminal:
python setup.py py2app
The script should run and you will find your finished application in the
dist folder.
Use the following options for more customization:
optimize (-O) optimization level: -O1 for "python -O" , -O2 for "python -
OO" , and -O0 to disable [default: -O0] includes (-i) comma-separated list
of modules to include packages (-p) comma-separated list of packages to
include
extension Bundle extension [default:.app for app , .plugin for plugin]
extra-scripts comma-separated list of additional scripts to include in an
application or plugin.

Section 96.2: cx_Freeze

Install cx_Freeze from here
Unzip the folder and run these commands from that directory:
python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install
Create a new directory for your python script and create a "setup.py"
file in the same directory with the following content:
application_title = "My Application" # Use your own application name
main_python_file = "my_script.py" # Your python script
import sys
from cx_Freeze import setup , Executable
base = None
if sys . platform == "win32" :
base = "Win32GUI"
includes = [ "atexit" , "re" ]

setup(
name = application_title,
version = "0.1" ,
description = "Your Description" ,
options = {"build_exe" : {"includes" : includes }}, executables =
[Executable(main_python_file, base = base)])

Now run your setup.py from terminal:

python setup.py bdist_mac NOTE: On El Capitan this will need to be
run as root with SIP mode disabled.

Chapter 97: Property Objects

Section 97.1: Using the @property decorator for read-write
properties

If you want to use @ property to implement custom behavior for setting

and getting, use this pattern:

class Cash(object ):
def __init__ (self , value):
self .value = value
@ property
def formatted( self ):
return '${:.2f}' .format( self .value)
@ formatted.setter
def formatted( self , new ):
self .value = float ( new [ 1 :])
To use this:

>>> wallet = Cash(2.50 )

>>> print (wallet.formatted) $2.50
>>> print (wallet.value)
2.5
>>> wallet.formatted = '$123.45' >>> print (wallet.formatted) $123.45
>>> print (wallet.value)
123.45

Section 97.2: Using the @property decorator

The @ property decorator can be used to define methods in a class which

act like attributes. One example where this can be useful is when
exposing information which may require an initial (expensive) lookup
and simple retrieval thereafter.

Given some module foobar.py:

class Foo( object ):
def __init__ ( self ): self .__bar = None @ property
def bar( self ):
if self .__bar is None :
self .__bar = some_expensive_lookup_operation() return self .__bar
Then

>>> from foobar import Foo

>>> foo = Foo()
>>> print (foo.bar) # This will take some time since bar is None after
initialization 42
>>> print (foo.bar) # This is much faster since bar has a value now
42
Section 97.3: Overriding just a getter, setter or a deleter of a
property object

When you inherit from a class with a property, you can provide a new
implementation for one or more of the property getter, setter or deleter
functions, by referencing the property object on the parent class :

class BaseClass(object ):
@ property
def foo(self ):

return some_calculated_value()
@ foo.setter
def foo( self , value):
do_something_with_value(value)

class DerivedClass(BaseClass):
@ BaseClass.foo.setter
def foo(self , value):

do_something_different_with_value(value) You can also add a setter or

deleter where there was not one on the base class before.

Section 97.4: Using properties without decorators

While using decorator syntax (with the @) is convenient, it also a bit

concealing. You can use properties directly, without decorators. The
following Python 3.x example shows this:

class A:
p = 1234
def getX (self ):

return self ._x

def setX ( self , value):
self ._x = value
def getY ( self ):
return self ._y
def setY ( self , value):
self ._y = 1000 + value # Weird but possible
def getY2 ( self ):
return self ._y
def setY2 ( self , value):
self ._y = value
def getT ( self ):
return self ._t
def setT ( self , value):
self ._t = value
def getU ( self ):
return self ._u + 10000

def setU (self , value):

self ._u = value - 5000
x, y, y2 = property (getX, setX), property (getY, setY), property (getY2,
setY2) t = property (getT, setT)
u = property (getU, setU)

A.q = 5678
class B:
def getZ ( self ): return self .z_ def setZ ( self , value): self .z_ = value
z = property (getZ , setZ)
class C:
def __init__ ( self ): self .offset = 1234 def getW ( self ):
return self .w_ + self .offset
def setW ( self , value):
self .w_ = value - self .offset
w = property (getW , setW)
a1 = A () a2 = A ()
a1.y2 = 1000 a2.y2 = 2000
a1.x = 5 a1.y = 6
a2.x = 7 a2.y = 8
a1.t = 77 a1.u = 88

print (a1.x, a1.y, a1.y2) print (a2.x, a2.y, a2.y2) print (a1.p, a2.p, a1.q,
a2.q)

print (a1.t , a1.u)

b = B () c = C ()

b.z = 100100
c.z = 200200
c.w = 300300

print (a1.x , b.z , c.z , c.w)

c.w = 400400
c.z = 500500
b.z = 600600

print (a1.x , b.z , c.z , c.w)

Chapter 98: Overloading

Section 98.1: Operator overloading

Below are the operators that can be overloaded in classes, along with the
method definitions that are required, and an example of the operator in
use within an expression.
N.B. The use of other as a variable name is not mandatory, but is
considered the norm.
Operator
+ Addition

- Subtraction
* Multiplication
@ Matrix Multiplication / Division

/ Division
// Floor Division
% Modulo/Remainder ** Power
<< Bitwise Left Shift >> Bitwise Right Shift & Bitwise AND
^ Bitwise XOR
| (Bitwise OR)
- Negation (Arithmetic) + Positive
~ Bitwise NOT
< Less than
<= Less than or Equal to == Equal to
!= Not Equal to
> Greater than

Method
__add__ ( self , other)

__sub__ (self , other) __mul__ (self , other) __matmul__(self , other)

__div__ (self , other) __truediv__(self , other) __floordiv__(self , other)
__mod__ (self , other)

Expression
a1 + a2

a1 - a2
a1 * a2
a1 @ a2 (Python 3.5 ) a1 / a2 (Python 2 only ) a1 / a2 (Python 3 ) a1 // a2
a1 % a2
__pow__ (self , other[, modulo]) a1 ** a2 __lshift__ (self , other) a1 << a2
__rshift__ (self , other) a1 >> a2 __and__ (self , other) a1 & a2
__xor__ (self , other) a1 ^ a2
__or__ (self , other) a1 | a2
__neg__ (self ) -a1 __pos__ (self ) +a1 __invert__ (self ) ~ a1 __lt__ (self ,
other) a1 < a2
__le__ (self , other) a1 <= a2 __eq__ (self , other) a1 == a2 __ne__ (self ,
other) a1 != a2 __gt__ (self , other) a1 > a2
>= Greater than or Equal to__ge__ (self , other) a1 >= a2 [index] Index
operator __getitem__ (self , index) a1[index] in In operator __contains__
(self , other) a2 in a1 (*args, ...) Calling __call__ (self , *args, **kwargs)
a1(*args, **kwargs)

The optional parameter modulo for __pow__ is only used by the pow built-in
function.
Each of the methods corresponding to a binary operator has a
corresponding "right" method which start with __r, for example
__radd__ :
class A:
def __init__ ( self , a): self .a = a

def __add__ (self , other): return self .a + other

def __radd__ (self , other): print ("radd" )

return other + self .a

A( 1 ) + 2 # Out: 3
2 + A( 1 ) # prints radd. Out: 3
as well as a corresponding inplace version, starting with __i:
class B:
def __init__ ( self , b): self .b = b

def __iadd__ (self , other): self .b += other

print ("iadd" )
return self

b = B(2 )
b.b # Out: 2
b += 1 # prints iadd b.b # Out: 3

Since there's nothing special about these methods, many other parts of
the language, parts of the standard library, and even third-party
modules add magic methods on their own, like methods to cast an object
to a type or checking properties of the object. For example, the builtin
str () function calls the object's __str__ method, if it exists. Some of these
uses are listed below.

Function Method Casting to int __int__ (self ) Absolute function __abs__

(self ) Casting to str __str__ (self ) Casting to unicode __unicode__ (self )
String representation__repr__ (self )

__nonzero__ ( self ) Casting to bool

String formatting Hashing

Length
Reversed
Floor
Ceiling

Expression
int (a1)
abs (a1)
str (a1)
unicode (a1) (Python 2 only) repr (a1)
bool (a1)

__format__( self , formatstr) "Hi {:abc}" .format(a1) __hash__ (self )

hash (a1)
__len__ (self ) len (a1)
__reversed__(self ) reversed (a1)
__floor__(self ) math .floor(a1) __ceil__(self ) math .ceil(a1)

There are also the special methods __enter__ and __exit__ for context
managers, and many more.

Section 98.2: Magic/Dunder Methods

Magic (also called dunder as an abbreviation for double-underscore)

methods in Python serve a similar purpose to operator overloading in
other languages. They allow a class to define its behavior when it is used
as an operand in unary or binary operator expressions. They also serve
as implementations called by some built-in functions.

Consider this implementation of two-dimensional vectors.

import math

class Vector(object ):
# instantiation
def __init__ (self , x, y):

self .x = x self .y = y
# unary negation (-v)
def __neg__ ( self ):
return Vector( self .x , self .y) # addition (v + u)
def __add__ ( self , other):
return Vector( self .x + other.x , self .y + other.y) # subtraction (v - u)
def __sub__ ( self , other): return self + (-other) # equality (v == u)
def __eq__ ( self , other):
return self .x == other.x and self .y == other.y # abs(v)
def __abs__ ( self ):
return math .hypot( self .x , self .y) # str(v)
def __str__ ( self ):
return '<{0.x}, {0.y}>' .format( self ) # repr(v)
def __repr__ ( self ):
return 'Vector({0.x}, {0.y})' .format( self ) Now it is possible to naturally
use instances of the Vector class in various expressions.
v = Vector( 1 , 4 ) u = Vector( 2 , 0 )

u + v # Vector(3, 4)
print (u + v) # "<3, 4>" (implicit string conversion) u - v # Vector(1, -4)
u == v # False
u + v == v + u # True
abs (u + v) # 5.0

Section 98.3: Container and sequence types

It is possible to emulate container types, which support accessing values
by key or index.
Consider this naive implementation of a sparse list, which stores only its
non-zero elements to conserve memory.

class sparselist(object ):
def __init__ (self , size):
self .size = size
self .data = {}

# l[index]
def __getitem__ ( self , index):
if index < 0 :
index + = self .size
if index >= self .size:
raise IndexError (index)

try : return self .data[index]

except KeyError :
return 0.0

# l[index] = value
def __setitem__ ( self , index , value): self .data[index] = value

# del l[index]
def __delitem__ (self , index): if index in self .data:

del self .data[index]

# value in l
def __contains__ ( self , value):
return value == 0.0 or value in self .data.values() # len(l)
def __len__ ( self ): return self .size # for value in l: ...
def __iter__ ( self ):
return ( self [i] for i in range ( self .size)) # use xrange for python2 Then, we can
use a sparselist much like a regular list .

l = sparselist(10 ** 6 ) # list with 1 million elements

0 in l # True
10 in l # False

l[ 12345 ] = 10
10 in l # True l[12345 ] # 10

for v in l:
pass # 0, 0, 0, ... 10, 0, 0 ... 0

Section 98.4: Callable types

class adder(object ):
def __init__ (self , first):
self .first = first
# a(...)
def __call__ ( self , second):
return self .first + second

add2 = adder(2 ) add2(1 ) # 3

add2(2 ) # 4

Section 98.5: Handling unimplemented behaviour

If your class doesn't implement a specific overloaded operator for the

argument types provided, it should return NotImplemented (note that
this is a special constant , not the same as NotImplementedError ). This
will allow Python to fall back to trying other methods to make the
operation work:
When NotImplemented is returned, the interpreter will then try the
reflected operation on the other type, or some other fallback, depending
on the operator. If all attempted operations return NotImplemented , the
interpreter will raise an appropriate exception.

For example, given x + y, if x. __add__ (y) returns unimplemented, y.

__radd__ (x) is attempted instead.
class NotAddable( object ):
def __init__ ( self , value): self .value = value
def __add__ ( self , other): return NotImplemented
class Addable(NotAddable):
def __add__ ( self , other):
return Addable( self .value + other.value)
__radd__ = __add__
As this is the reflected method we have to implement __add__ and __radd__
to get the expected behaviour in all cases; fortunately, as they are both
doing the same thing in this simple example, we can take a shortcut.
In use:

>>> x = NotAddable(1 )
>>> y = Addable(2 )
>>> x + x
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
TypeError : unsupported operand type (s) for +: 'NotAddable' and
'NotAddable' >>> y + y
< so.Addable object at 0x1095974d0 >
>>> z = x + y
>>> z
< so.Addable object at 0x109597510 >
>>> z.value

Chapter 99: Polymorphism

Section 99.1: Duck Typing

Polymorphism without inheritance in the form of duck typing as

available in Python due to its dynamic typing system. This means that as
long as the classes contain the same methods the Python interpreter does
not distinguish between them, as the only checking of the calls occurs at
run-time.

class Duck:
def quack( self ):
print ( "Quaaaaaack!" )
def feathers( self ):
print ( "The duck has white and gray feathers." )
class Person:
def quack( self ):
print ( "The person imitates a duck." )

def feathers(self ):
print ("The person takes a feather from the ground and shows it." )
def name(self ):
print ("John Smith" )

def in_the_forest(obj): obj.quack()

obj.feathers()

donald = Duck()
john = Person()
in_the_forest(donald) in_the_forest(john)

The output is:

Quaaaaaack!
The duck has white and gray feathers.
The person imitates a duck.
The person takes a feather from the ground and shows it.

Section 99.2: Basic Polymorphism

Polymorphism is the ability to perform an action on an object regardless

of its type. This is generally implemented by creating a base class and
having two or more subclasses that all implement methods with the same
signature. Any other function or method that manipulates these objects
can call the same methods regardless of which type of object it is
operating on, without needing to do a type check first. In object-oriented
terminology when class X extend class Y , then Y is called super class or
base class and X is called subclass or derived class.

class Shape:
"""
This is a parent class that is intended to be inherited by other classes """

def calculate_area(self ):
"""
This method is intended to be overridden in subclasses.
If a subclass doesn't implement it but it is called, NotImplemented will be
raised. """
raise NotImplemented

class Square(Shape):
"""
This is a subclass of the Shape class, and represents a square """
side_length = 2 # in this example, the sides are 2 units long

def calculate_area(self ):
"""
This method overrides Shape.calculate_area(). When an object of type
Square has its calculate_area() method called, this is the method that will
be called, rather than the parent class' version.

It performs the calculation necessary for this shape, a square, and

returns the result.
"""
return self .side_length * 2

class Triangle(Shape):
"""
This is also a subclass of the Shape class, and it represents a triangle """
base_length = 4
height = 3

def calculate_area(self ):
"""
This method also overrides Shape.calculate_area() and performs the
area calculation for a triangle, returning the result.
"""

return 0.5 * self .base_length * self .height

def get_area(input_obj):
"""
This function accepts an input object, and will call that object's
calculate_area() method. Note that the object type is not specified. It
could be a Square, Triangle, or Shape object.
"""

print (input_obj.calculate_area())

# Create one object of each class shape_obj = Shape()

square_obj = Square()
triangle_obj = Triangle()

# Now pass each object, one at a time, to the get_area() function and see
the # result.
get_area(shape_obj)
get_area(square_obj)
get_area(triangle_obj)

We should see this output:

None 6.0

What happens without polymorphism?

Without polymorphism, a type check may be required before
performing an action on an object to determine the correct method to
call. The following counter example performs the same task as the
previous code, but without the use of polymorphism, the get_area()
function has to do more work.

class Square:
side_length = 2
def calculate_square_area( self ): return self .side_length ** 2
class Triangle:
base_length = 4 height = 3
def calculate_triangle_area( self ):
return ( 0.5 * self .base_length) * self .height
def get_area(input_obj):

# Notice the type checks that are now necessary here. These type checks #
could get very complicated for a more complex example, resulting in #
duplicate and difficult to maintain code.

if type (input_obj).__name__ == "Square" : area =

input_obj.calculate_square_area()
elif type (input_obj).__name__ == "Triangle" : area =
input_obj.calculate_triangle_area()
print (area)

# Create one object of each class square_obj = Square()

triangle_obj = Triangle()

# Now pass each object, one at a time, to the get_area() function and see
the # result.
get_area(square_obj)
get_area(triangle_obj)

We should see this output:

4
6.0

Important Note
Note that the classes used in the counter example are "new style" classes
and implicitly inherit from the object class if Python 3 is being used.
Polymorphism will work in both Python 2.x and 3.x, but the
polymorphism counterexample code will raise an exception if run in a
Python 2.x interpreter because type(input_obj).name will return
"instance" instead of the class name if they do not explicitly inherit from
object, resulting in area never being assigned to.

Chapter 100: Method Overriding

Section 100.1: Basic method overriding

Here is an example of basic overriding in Python (for the sake of clarity

and compatibility with both Python 2 and 3, using new style class and
print with ()):
class Parent( object ):
def introduce( self ):
print ( "Hello!" )
def print_name( self ):
print ( "Parent" )

class Child(Parent): def print_name(self ): print ("Child" )

p = Parent() c = Child()
p.introduce() p.print_name()
c.introduce() c.print_name()

$ python basic_override.py Hello!

Parent
Hello!
Child

When the Child class is created, it inherits the methods of the Parent
class. This means that any methods that the parent class has, the child
class will also have. In the example, the introduce is defined for the Child
class because it is defined for Parent, despite not being defined explicitly
in the class definition of Child.

In this example, the overriding occurs when Child defines its own
print_name method. If this method was not declared, then
c.print_name() would have printed "Parent" . However, Child has
overridden the Parent's definition of print_name, and so now upon
calling c.print_name(), the word "Child" is printed.

Chapter 101: User-Defined Methods

Section 101.1: Creating user-defined method objects

User-defined method objects may be created when getting an attribute of

a class (perhaps via an instance of that class), if that attribute is a user-
defined function object, an unbound user-defined method object, or a
class method object.

class A(object ):
# func: A user-defined function object
#
# Note that func is a function object when it's defined,
# and an unbound method object when it's retrieved.
def func(self ):

pass

# classMethod: A class method

@ classmethod
def classMethod(self ):
pass

class B(object ):
# unboundMeth: A unbound user-defined method object
#
# Parent.func is an unbound user-defined method object here,
# because it's retrieved.
unboundMeth = A.func

a = A() b = B()

print A.func
# output: <unbound method A.func>
print a.func
# output: <bound method A.func of <__main__.A object at 0x10e9ab910>>
print B.unboundMeth
# output: <unbound method A.func>
print b.unboundMeth
# output: <unbound method A.func>
print A.classMethod
# output: <bound method type.classMethod of <class '__main__.A'>> print
a.classMethod
# output: <bound method type.classMethod of <class '__main__.A'>>

When the attribute is a user-defined method object, a new method object

is only created if the class from which it is being retrieved is the same as,
or a derived class of, the class stored in the original method object;
otherwise, the original method object is used as it is.

# Parent: The class stored in the original method object class Parent(object
):
# func: The underlying function of original method object
def func(self ):
pass
func2 = func

# Child: A derived class of Parent class Child(Parent):

func = Parent.func
# AnotherClass: A different class, neither subclasses nor subclassed class
AnotherClass(object ): func = Parent.func

print Parent.func is Parent.func

print Parent.func2 is Parent.func2
print Child.func is Child.func
print AnotherClass.func is AnotherClass.func

# False, new object created # False, new object created # False, new object
created # True, original object used

Section 101.2: Turtle example

The following is an example of using an user-defined function to be
called multiple(∞) times in a script with ease.

import turtle , time , random #tell python we need 3 different modules

turtle .speed(0 ) #set draw speed to the fastest
turtle .colormode(255 ) #special colormode
turtle .pensize(4 ) #size of the lines that will be drawn
def triangle(size): #This is our own function, in the parenthesis is a
variable we have defined that will be used in THIS FUNCTION ONLY.
This fucntion creates a right triangle

turtle .forward(size) #to begin this function we go forward, the amount to

go forward by is the variable size
turtle .right(90 ) #turn right by 90 degree
turtle .forward(size) #go forward, again with variable
turtle .right(135 ) #turn right again
turtle .forward(size * 1.5 ) #close the triangle. thanks to the Pythagorean
theorem we know that this line must be 1.5 times longer than the other
two(if they are equal)
while (1 ): #INFINITE LOOP
turtle .setpos(random .randint(200 , 200 ), random .randint(200 , 200 )) #set
the draw point to a random (x,y) position
turtle .pencolor(random .randint(1 , 255 ), random .randint(1 , 255 ),
random .randint(1 , 255 )) #randomize the RGB color
triangle(random .randint(5 , 55 )) #use our function, because it has only
one variable we can simply put a value in the parenthesis. The value that
will be sent will be random between 5 - 55, end the end it really just
changes ow big the triangle is.
turtle .pencolor(random .randint(1 , 255 ), random .randint(1 , 255 ),
random .randint(1 , 255 )) #randomize color again

Chapter 102: String representations of class

instances: __str__ and __repr__
methods
Section 102.1: Motivation

So you've just created your first class in Python, a neat little class that
encapsulates a playing card:

class Card:
def __init__ (self , suit, pips):
self .suit = suit
self .pips = pips

Elsewhere in your code, you create a few instances of this class:

ace_of_spades = Card('Spades' , 1 )
four_of_clubs = Card('Clubs' , 4 )
six_of_hearts = Card('Hearts' , 6 )

You've even created a list of cards, in order to represent a "hand":

my_hand = [ace_of_spades , four_of_clubs , six_of_hearts]
Now, during debugging, you want to see what your hand looks like, so
you do what comes naturally and write:
print (my_hand)
But what you get back is a bunch of gibberish:

[ < __main__ .Card instance at 0x0000000002533788 >,

< __main__ .Card instance at 0x00000000025B95C8 >,
< __main__ .Card instance at 0x00000000025FF508 > ]

Confused, you try just printing a single card:

print (ace_of_spades)
And again, you get this weird output:
<__main__.Card instance at 0x0000000002533788 >
Have no fear. We're about to fix this.

First, however, it's important to understand what's going on here. When

you wrote print (ace_of_spades) you told Python you wanted it to print
information about the Card instance your code is calling ace_of_spades.
And to be fair, it did.

That output is comprised of two important bits: the type of the object and
the object's id . The second part alone (the hexadecimal number) is
enough to uniquely identify the object at the time of the print call.[1]
What really went on was that you asked Python to "put into words" the
essence of that object and then display it to you. A more explicit version
of the same machinery might be:
string_of_card = str (ace_of_spades) print (string_of_card)
In the first line, you try to turn your Card instance into a string, and in
the second you display it.
The Problem
The issue you're encountering arises due to the fact that, while you told
Python everything it needed to know about the Card class for you to
create cards, you didn't tell it how you wanted Card instances to be
converted to strings.
And since it didn't know, when you (implicitly) wrote str (ace_of_spades),
it gave you what you saw, a generic representation of the Card instance.
The Solution (Part 1)
But we can tell Python how we want instances of our custom classes to be
converted to strings. And the way we do this is with the __str__ "dunder"
(for double-underscore) or "magic" method.
Whenever you tell Python to create a string from a class instance, it will
look for a __str__ method on the class, and call it.
Consider the following, updated version of our Card class:

class Card:
def __init__ (self , suit, pips): self .suit = suit
self .pips = pips

def __str__ ( self ):

special_names = { 1 : 'Ace' , 11 : 'Jack' , 12 : 'Queen' , 13 : 'King' }
card_name = special_names.get( self .pips , str ( self .pips))
return "%s of %s" % (card_name , self .suit)
Here, we've now defined the __str__ method on our Card class which,
after a simple dictionary lookup for face cards, returns a string
formatted however we decide.

(Note that "returns" is in bold here, to stress the importance of

returning a string, and not simply printing it. Printing it may seem to
work, but then you'd have the card printed when you did something like
str (ace_of_spades), without even having a print function call in your
main program. So to be clear, make sure that __str__ returns a string.).

The __str__ method is a method, so the first argument will be self and it
should neither accept, nor be passed additional arguments.
Returning to our problem of displaying the card in a more user-friendly
manner, if we again run:
ace_of_spades = Card( 'Spades' , 1 ) print (ace_of_spades)
We'll see that our output is much better:
Ace of Spades

So great, we're done, right? Well just to cover our bases, let's double
check that we've solved the first issue we encountered, printing the list of
Card instances, the hand.

So we re-check the following code:

my_hand = [ace_of_spades , four_of_clubs , six_of_hearts] print (my_hand)
And, to our surprise, we get those funny hex codes again:

[ < __main__ .Card instance at 0x00000000026F95C8 >, < __main__ .Card

instance at 0x000000000273F4C8 >, < __main__ .Card instance at
0x0000000002732E08 > ]

What's going on? We told Python how we wanted our Card instances to
be displayed, why did it apparently seem to forget?
The Solution (Part 2)
Well, the behind-the-scenes machinery is a bit different when Python
wants to get the string representation of items in a list. It turns out,
Python doesn't care about __str__ for this purpose.
Instead, it looks for a different method, __repr__ , and if that's not found, it
falls back on the "hexadecimal thing".[2]
So you're saying I have to make two methods to do the same thing? One for
when I want to print my card by itself and another when it's in some sort of
container?
No, but first let's look at what our class would be like if we were to
implement both __str__ and __repr__ methods:
class Card:
special_names = { 1 : 'Ace' , 11 : 'Jack' , 12 : 'Queen' , 13 : 'King' }

def __init__ (self , suit, pips): self .suit = suit

self .pips = pips

def __str__ (self ):

card_name = Card.special_names.get(self .pips, str (self .pips)) return
"%s of %s (S)" % (card_name, self .suit)

def __repr__ (self ):

card_name = Card.special_names.get(self .pips, str (self .pips)) return
"%s of %s (R)" % (card_name, self .suit)

Here, the implementation of the two methods __str__ and __repr__ are
exactly the same, except that, to differentiate between the two methods,
(S) is added to strings returned by __str__ and (R) is added to strings
returned by __repr__ .

Note that just like our __str__ method, __repr__ accepts no arguments and
returns a string.
We can see now what method is responsible for each case:

ace_of_spades = Card('Spades' , 1 ) four_of_clubs = Card('Clubs' , 4 )

six_of_hearts = Card('Hearts' , 6 )
my_hand = [ace_of_spades , four_of_clubs , six_of_hearts]
print (my_hand) # [Ace of Spades (R), 4 of Clubs (R), 6 of Hearts (R)]
print (ace_of_spades) # Ace of Spades (S)
As was covered, the __str__ method was called when we passed our Card
instance to print and the __repr__ method was called when we passed a list
of our instances to print .

At this point it's worth pointing out that just as we can explicitly create a
string from a custom class instance using str () as we did earlier, we can
also explicitly create a string representation of our class with a built-in
function called repr ().

For example:
str_card = str (four_of_clubs) print (str_card)
# 4 of Clubs (S)
repr_card = repr (four_of_clubs) print (repr_card)
# 4 of Clubs (R)
And additionally, if defined, we could call the methods directly (although
it seems a bit unclear and unnecessary):
print (four_of_clubs. __str__ ()) # 4 of Clubs (S)
print (four_of_clubs. __repr__ ()) # 4 of Clubs (R) About those duplicated
functions...
Python developers realized, in the case you wanted identical strings to be
returned from str () and repr () you might have to functionally-duplicate
methods -- something nobody likes.

So instead, there is a mechanism in place to eliminate the need for that.

One I snuck you past up to this point. It turns out that if a class
implements the __repr__ method but not the __str__ method, and you
pass an instance of that class to str () (whether implicitly or explicitly),
Python will fallback on your __repr__ implementation and use that.

So, to be clear, consider the following version of the Card class:

class Card:
special_names = { 1 : 'Ace' , 11 : 'Jack' , 12 : 'Queen' , 13 : 'King' }

def __init__ (self , suit, pips): self .suit = suit

self .pips = pips
def __repr__ (self ):
card_name = Card.special_names.get(self .pips, str (self .pips)) return
"%s of %s" % (card_name, self .suit)

Note this version only implements the __repr__ method. Nonetheless, calls
to str () result in the user-friendly version:
print (six_of_hearts) print ( str (six_of_hearts))
# 6 of Hearts (implicit conversion) # 6 of Hearts (explicit conversion)
as do calls to repr ():
print ([six_of_hearts]) #[6 of Hearts] (implicit conversion) print ( repr
(six_of_hearts)) # 6 of Hearts (explicit conversion) Summary

In order for you to empower your class instances to "show themselves"

in user-friendly ways, you'll want to consider implementing at least your
class's __repr__ method. If memory serves, during a talk Raymond
Hettinger said that ensuring classes implement __repr__ is one of the
first things he looks for while doing Python code reviews, and by now it
should be clear why. The amount of information you could have added to
debugging statements, crash reports, or log files with a simple method is
overwhelming when compared to the paltry, and often less-than-helpful
(type, id) information that is given by default.

If you want different representations for when, for example, inside a

container, you'll want to implement both __repr__ and __str__ methods.
(More on how you might use these two methods differently below).

Section 102.2: Both methods implemented, eval-round-trip

style __repr__()
class Card:
special_names = { 1 : 'Ace' , 11 : 'Jack' , 12 : 'Queen' , 13 : 'King' }

def __init__ (self , suit, pips):

self .suit = suit
self .pips = pips

# Called when instance is converted to a string via str()

# Examples:
# print(card1)
# print(str(card1)
def __str__ (self ):

card_name = Card.special_names.get( self .pips , str ( self .pips))

return "%s of %s" % (card_name , self .suit)

# Called when instance is converted to a string via repr() # Examples:

# print([card1, card2, card3])
# print(repr(card1))
def __repr__ (self ):

return "Card(%s, %d)" % ( self .suit , self .pips)

Chapter 103: Debugging

Section 103.1: Via IPython and ipdb

If IPython (or Jupyter ) are installed, the debugger can be invoked using:
import ipdb
ipdb.set_trace()
When reached, the code will exit and print:

/home/usr/ook.py( 3 )< module> ()

1 import ipdb
2 ipdb.set_trace()
---> 3 print ("Hello world!" )

ipdb >
Clearly, this means that one has to edit the code. There is a simpler way:

from IPython.core import ultratb

sys .excepthook = ultratb.FormattedTB(mode= 'Verbose' ,
color_scheme= 'Linux' ,
call_pdb= 1 )
This will cause the debugger to be called if there is an uncaught
exception raised.

Section 103.2: The Python Debugger: Step-through Debugging

with _pdb_
The Python Standard Library includes an interactive debugging library
called pdb . pdb has extensive capabilities, the most commonly used being
the ability to 'step-through' a program.
To immediately enter into step-through debugging use:
python -m pdb < my_file.py >
This will start the debugger at the first line of the program.
Usually you will want to target a specific section of the code for
debugging. To do this we import the pdb library and use set_trace() to
interrupt the flow of this troubled example code.
import pdb

def divide(a, b):

pdb .set_trace()
return a/b
# What's wrong with this? Hint: 2 != 3

print divide( 1 , 2 )
Running this program will launch the interactive debugger.
python foo.py
> ~ /scratch/foo.py( 5 )divide()
- > return a/b (Pdb)
Often this command is used on one line so it can be commented out with
a single # character
import pdf ; pdb .set_trace()
At the (Pdb) prompt commands can be entered. These commands can be
debugger commands or python. To print variables we can use p from the
debugger, or python's print .

(Pdb) p a
1
(Pdb) print a 1
To see list of all local variables use
locals
build-in function
These are good debugger commands to know:

b | : set breakpoint at line *n* or function named *f*.

#b3
# b divide
b: show all breakpoints.
c: continue until the next breakpoint.
s: step through this line (will enter a function).
n: step over this line (jumps over a function).
r: continue until the current function returns.
l: list a window of code around this line.
p : print variable named *var*.
#px
q: quit debugger.
bt: print the traceback of the current execution call stack
up: move your scope up the function call stack to the caller of the current
function down: Move your scope back down the function call stack one
level
step: Run the program until the next line of execution in the program, then
return control back to the debugger
next: run the program until the next line of execution in the current
function, then return control back to the debugger
return: run the program until the current function returns, then return
control back to the debugger
continue: continue running the program until the next breakpoint (or
set_trace si called again)

The debugger can also evaluate python interactively:

- > return a/b

(Pdb) p a+b
3

(Pdb) [ str (m) for m in [a, b]] ['1' , '2' ]

(Pdb) [ d for d in xrange (5 )] [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
Note: If any of your variable names coincide with the debugger
commands, use an exclamation mark '!' before the var to explicitly refer
to the variable and not the debugger command. For example, often it
might so happen that you use the variable name 'c' for a counter, and
you might want to print it while in the debugger. a simple 'c' command
would continue execution till the next breakpoint. Instead use '!c' to
print the value of the variable as follows:

(Pdb) ! c 4

Section 103.3: Remote debugger

Sometimes you need to debug python code which is executed by another
process and in this cases rpdb comes in handy.
rpdb is a wrapper around pdb that re-routes stdin and stdout to a socket
handler. By default it opens the debugger on port 4444
Usage:

# In the Python file you want to debug. import rpdb

rpdb.set_trace()

And then you need run this in terminal to connect to this process.
# Call in a terminal to see the output $ nc 127.0.0.1 4444
And you will get pdb promt

> /home/usr/ook.py(3 )< module> ()

-> print ("Hello world!" )
(Pdb)

Chapter 104: Reading and Writing CSV

Section 104.1: Using pandas

Write a CSV file from a dict or a DataFrame.

import pandas as pd

d = {'a' : (1 , 101 ), 'b' : (2 , 202 ), 'c' : (3 , 303 )}

pd.DataFrame.from_dict(d, orient= "index" )
df.to_csv("data.csv" )

Read a CSV file as a DataFrame and convert it to a dict :

df = pd.read_csv( "data.csv" )
d = df.to_dict()

Section 104.2: Writing a TSV file

Python
import csv

with open ('/tmp/output.tsv' , 'wt' ) as out_file:

tsv_writer = csv .writer(out_file, delimiter= ' \t ' )
tsv_writer.writerow(['name' , 'field' ])
tsv_writer.writerow(['Dijkstra' , 'Computer Science' ])
tsv_writer.writerow(['Shelah' , 'Math' ])
tsv_writer.writerow(['Aumann' , 'Economic Sciences' ])

Output file
$ cat /tmp/output.tsv

name field
Dijkstra Computer Science
Shelah Math
Aumann Economic Sciences

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Chapter 105: Writing to CSV from String or List
Parameter open ("/path/", "mode") open (path, "mode") csv.writer(file,
delimiter)

Details
Specify the path to your CSV file
Specify mode to open file in (read, write, etc.) Pass opened CSV file here

csv.writer(file, delimiter=' ')Specify delimiter character or pattern

Writing to a .csv file is not unlike writing to a regular file in most
regards, and is fairly straightforward. I will, to the best of my ability,
cover the easiest, and most efficient approach to the problem.

Section 105.1: Basic Write Example

import csv
#------ We will write to CSV in this function -----------
def csv_writer(data , path):
#Open CSV file whose path we passed.
with open (path , "wb" ) as csv_file:
writer = csv .writer(csv_file , delimiter = ',' ) for line in data:
writer.writerow(line)
#---- Define our list here, and call function -----------
if __name__ == "__main__" :

"""
data = our list that we want to write. Split it so we get a list of lists.
"""
data = ["first_name,last_name,age" .split("," ),

"John,Doe,22" .split("," ),
"Jane,Doe,31" .split("," ),
"Jack,Reacher,27" .split("," )
]

# Path to CSV file we want to write to. path = "output.csv"

csv_writer(data, path)

Section 105.2: Appending a String as a newline in a CSV file

def append_to_csv(input_string):
with open ( "fileName.csv" , "a" ) as csv_file:
csv_file.write(input_row + " \n " )

Chapter 106: Dynamic code execution with `exec`

and `eval`
Argument Details
expressionThe expression code as a string, or a code object
object The statement code as a string, or a code object

globals
The dictionary to use for global variables. If locals is not specified, this is
also used for locals. If omitted, the globals () of calling scope are used.

A mapping object that is used for local variables. If omitted, the one
passed for globals is used locals instead. If both are omitted, then the
globals () and locals () of the calling scope are used for
globals and locals respectively.

Section 106.1: Executing code provided by untrusted user using

exec, eval, or ast.literal_eval

It is not possible to use eval or exec to execute code from untrusted user
securely. Even ast.literal_eval is prone to crashes in the parser. It is
sometimes possible to guard against malicious code execution, but it
doesn't exclude the possibility of outright crashes in the parser or the
tokenizer.

To evaluate code by an untrusted user you need to turn to some third-

party module, or perhaps write your own parser and your own virtual
machine in Python.

Section 106.2: Evaluating a string containing a Python literal

with ast.literal_eval
If you have a string that contains Python literals, such as strings, floats
etc, you can use ast.literal_eval to evaluate its value instead of eval . This
has the added feature of allowing only certain syntax.

>>> import ast

>>> code = """(1, 2, {'foo': 'bar'})""" >>> object = ast.literal_eval(code )
>>> object
(1 , 2 , {'foo' : 'bar' })
>>> type (object )
< class 'tuple' >

However, this is not secure for execution of code provided by untrusted

user, and it is trivial to crash an interpreter with carefully crafted input

>>> import ast

>>> ast.literal_eval('()' * 1000000 )
[5 ] 21358 segmentation fault (core dumped) python3

Here, the input is a string of () repeated one million times, which causes a
crash in CPython parser. CPython developers do not consider bugs in
parser as security issues.

Section 106.3: Evaluating statements with exec

>>> code = """for i in range(5): \n print('Hello world!')""" >>> exec (code

Hello world!
Hello world!
Hello world!
Hello world! Hello world!

Section 106.4: Evaluating an expression with eval

>>> expression = '5 + 3 * a'

>>> a = 5
>>> result = eval (expression)
>>> result
20
Section 106.5: Precompiling an expression to evaluate it
multiple times

compile built-in function can be used to precompile an expression to a

code object; this code object can then be passed to eval. This will speed
up the repeated executions of the evaluated code. The 3rd parameter to
compile needs to be the string 'eval' .

>>> code = compile ('a * b + c' , '<string>' , 'eval' )

>>> code
< code object < module> at 0x7f0e51a58830 , file "<string>" , line 1 > >>>
b, c = 1 , 2 , 3
>>> eval (code )
5

Section 106.6: Evaluating an expression with eval using custom

globals

>>> variables = {'a' : 6 , 'b' : 7 } >>> eval ('a * b' , globals = variables) 42

As a plus, with this the code cannot accidentally refer to the names
defined outside:

>>> eval ('variables' )

{'a' : 6 , 'b' : 7 }
>>> eval ('variables' , globals = variables) Traceback (most recent call
last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module > File "<string>" , line 1 , in < module
NameError : name 'variables' is not defined
Using defaultdict allows for example having undefined variables set to
zero:

>>> from collections import defaultdict

>>> variables = defaultdict(int , {'a' : 42 })
>>> eval ('a * c' , globals = variables) # note that 'c' is not explicitly defined
Chapter 107: PyInstaller - Distributing Python
Code
Section 107.1: Installation and Setup
Pyinstaller is a normal python package. It can be installed using pip:
pip install pyinstaller

Installation in Windows
For Windows, pywin32 or pypiwin32 is a prerequisite. The latter is
installed automatically when pyinstaller is installed using pip.

Installation in Mac OS X
PyInstaller works with the default Python 2.7 provided with current Mac
OS X. If later versions of Python are to be used or if any major packages
such as PyQT, Numpy, Matplotlib and the like are to be used, it is
recommended to install them using either MacPorts or Homebrew .

Installing from the archive

If pip is not available, download the compressed archive from PyPI .
To test the development version, download the compressed archive from
the develop branch of PyInstaller Downloads page.

Expand the archive and find the setup.py script. Execute python
setup.py install with administrator privilege to install or upgrade
PyInstaller.

Verifying the installation

The command pyinstaller should exist on the system path for all
platforms after a successful installation. Verify it by typing pyinstaller --
version in the command line. This will print the current version of
pyinstaller.

Section 107.2: Using Pyinstaller

In the simplest use-case, just navigate to the directory your file is in, and
type:
pyinstaller myfile.py
Pyinstaller analyzes the file and creates:

A myfile.spec file in the same directory as myfile.py

A build folder in the same directory as myfile.py
A dist folder in the same directory as myfile.py
Log files in the build folder

The bundled app can be found in the dist folder

Options
There are several options that can be used with pyinstaller. A full list of
the options can be found here . Once bundled your app can be run by
opening 'dist\myfile\myfile.exe'.

Section 107.3: Bundling to One Folder

When PyInstaller is used without any options to bundle myscript.py , the

default output is a single folder (named myscript) containing an
executable named myscript (myscript.exe in windows) along with all the
necessary dependencies.
The app can be distributed by compressing the folder into a zip file.

One Folder mode can be explicitly set using the option -D or --onedir
pyinstaller myscript.py -D
Advantages:

One of the major advantages of bundling to a single folder is that it is

easier to debug problems. If any modules fail to import, it can be verified
by inspecting the folder.
Another advantage is felt during updates. If there are a few changes in
the code but the dependencies used are exactly the same, distributors can
just ship the executable file (which is typically smaller than the entire
folder).

Disadvantages

The only disadvantage of this method is that the users have to search for
the executable among a large number of files.
Also users can delete/modify other files which might lead to the app not
being able to work correctly.

Section 107.4: Bundling to a Single File

pyinstaller myscript.py -F
The options to generate a single file are -F or --onefile. This bundles the
program into a single myscript.exe file. Single file executable are slower
than the one-folder bundle. They are also harder to debug.

Chapter 108: Data Visualization with Python

Section 108.1: Seaborn

Seaborn is a wrapper around Matplotlib that makes creating common

statistical plots easy. The list of supported plots includes univariate and
bivariate distribution plots, regression plots, and a number of methods
for plotting categorical variables. The full list of plots Seaborn provides
is in their API reference .

Creating graphs in Seaborn is as simple as calling the appropriate

graphing function. Here is an example of creating a histogram, kernel
density estimation, and rug plot for randomly generated data.
import numpy as np # numpy used to create data from plotting
import seaborn as sns # common form of importing seaborn
# Generate normally distributed data
data = np. random .randn( 1000 )
# Plot a histogram with both a rugplot and kde graph superimposed
sns.distplot(data , kde = True , rug = True )
The style of the plot can also be controlled using a declarative syntax.
# Using previously created imports and data.
# Use a dark background with no grid.
sns.set_style( 'dark' )
# Create the plot again
sns.distplot(data , kde = True , rug = True )
As an added bonus, normal matplotlib commands can still be applied to
Seaborn plots. Here's an example of adding axis titles to our previously
created histogram.
# Using previously created data and style
# Access to matplotlib commands
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Previously created plot.
sns.distplot(data, kde= True , rug= True )
# Set the axis labels.
plt.xlabel('This is my x-axis' )
plt.ylabel('This is my y-axis' )

Section 108.2: Matplotlib

Matplotlib is a mathematical plotting library for Python that provides a
variety of different plotting functionality.
The matplotlib documentation can be found here , with the SO Docs being
available here.
Matplotlib provides two distinct methods for plotting, though they are
interchangeable for the most part:

Firstly, matplotlib provides the pyplot interface, direct and simple-to-use

interface that allows plotting of complex graphs in a MATLAB-like style.
Secondly, matplotlib allows the user to control the different aspects
(axes, lines, ticks, etc) directly using an object-based system. This is more
difficult but allows complete control over the entire plot.

Below is an example of using the pyplot interface to plot some generated

data:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Generate some data for plotting.

x = [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]
y = [i**2 for i in x]

# Plot the data x, y with some keyword arguments that control the plot style.
# Use two different plot commands to plot both points (scatter) and a line
(plot).
plt.scatter(x , y , c = 'blue' , marker = 'x' , s = 100 ) # Create blue markers of shape
"x" and size 100 plt.plot(x , y , color = 'red' , linewidth = 2 ) # Create a red line
with linewidth 2.

# Add some text to the axes and a title.

plt.xlabel('x data' )
plt.ylabel('y data' )
plt.title('An example plot' )

# Generate the plot and show to the user. plt.show()

Note that plt.show() is known to be problematic in some environments
due to running matplotlib.pyplot in interactive mode, and if so, the
blocking behaviour can be overridden explicitly by passing in an
optional argument, plt.show(block= True ), to alleviate the issue.
Section 108.3: Plotly

Plotly is a modern platform for plotting and data visualization. Useful

for producing a variety of plots, especially for data sciences, Plotly is
available as a library for Python, R, JavaScript, Julia and, MATLAB. It
can also be used as a web application with these languages.

Users can install plotly library and use it offline after user
authentication. The installation of this library and offline authentication
is given here . Also, the plots can be made in Jupyter Notebooks as well.
Usage of this library requires an account with username and password.
This gives the workspace to save plots and data on the cloud.

The free version of the library has some slightly limited features and
designed for making 250 plots per day. The paid version has all the
features, unlimited plot downloads and more private data storage. For
more details, one can visit the main page here .
For documentation and examples, one can go here

A sample plot from the documentation examples:

import plotly.graph_objs as go import plotly as ply
# Create random data with numpy import numpy as np

N = 100
random_x = np.linspace(0 , 1 , N) random_y0 = np.random .randn(N)+5
random_y1 = np.random .randn(N) random_y2 = np.random .randn(N)5

# Create traces
trace0 = go.Scatter(
x = random_x,

y = random_y0,
mode = 'lines' ,
name = 'lines'
)
trace1 = go.Scatter(

x = random_x,
y = random_y1,
mode = 'lines+markers' , name = 'lines+markers'

)
trace2 = go.Scatter(
x = random_x,

y = random_y2,
mode = 'markers' ,
name = 'markers'

)
data = [trace0 , trace1 , trace2] ply.offline.plot(data , filename = 'line-mode'
Section 108.4: MayaVI

MayaVI is a 3D visualization tool for scientific data. It uses the

Visualization Tool Kit or VTK under the hood. Using the power of VTK
, MayaVI is capable of producing a variety of 3-Dimensional plots and
figures. It is available as a separate software application and also as a
library. Similar to Matplotlib , this library provides an object oriented
programming language interface to create plots without having to know
about VTK.

MayaVI is available only in Python 2.7x series! It is hoped to be available

in Python 3-x series soon! (Although some success is noticed when using
its dependencies in Python 3)
Documentation can be found here . Some gallery examples are found here
Here is a sample plot created using MayaVI from the documentation.

# Author: Gael Varoquaux <gael.varoquaux@normalesup.org>

# Copyright (c) 2007, Enthought, Inc.
# License: BSD Style.

from numpy import sin , cos , mgrid , pi , sqrt

from mayavi import mlab
mlab.figure(fgcolor = ( 0 , 0 , 0 ) , bgcolor = ( 1 , 1 , 1 ))
u , v = mgrid[- 0.035 :pi: 0.01 , - 0.035 :pi: 0.01 ]
X = 2 / 3 . * (cos(u) * cos( 2 * v)
+ sqrt( 2 ) * sin(u) * cos(v)) * cos(u) / (sqrt( 2 )
sin( 2 * u) * sin( 3 * v))

Y = 2 / 3 . * (cos(u) * sin(2 * v)
sqrt(2 ) * sin(u) * sin(v)) * cos(u) / (sqrt(2 )
- sin(2 * u) * sin(3 * v))
Z = -sqrt(2 ) * cos(u) * cos(u) / (sqrt(2 ) - sin(2 * u) * sin(3 * v)) S = sin(u)

mlab.mesh(X , Y , Z , scalars = S , colormap = 'YlGnBu' , )

# Nice view from the front mlab.view(.0 , - 5.0 , 4 ) mlab.show()

Chapter 109: The Interpreter (Command Line
Console)
Section 109.1: Getting general help

If the help function is called in the console without any arguments, Python
presents an interactive help console, where you can find out about
Python modules, symbols, keywords and more.
>>> help ()
Welcome to Python 3.4 's help utility!
If this is your first time using Python, you should definitely check out
the tutorial on the Internet at http://docs.python.org/3.4/tutorial/.

Enter the name of any module, keyword, or topic to get help on writing
Python programs and using Python modules. To quit this help utility and
return to the interpreter, just type "quit".

To get a list of available modules, keywords, symbols, or topics, type

"modules", "keywords", "symbols", or "topics". Each module also
comes
with a one-line summary of what it does; to list the modules whose name
or summary contain a given string such as "spam", type "modules
spam".

Section 109.2: Referring to the last expression

To get the value of the last result from your last expression in the
console, use an underscore _.

>>> 2 + 2
4
>>> _
4
>>> _ + 6
10

This magic underscore value is only updated when using a python

expression that results in a value. Defining functions or for loops does
not change the value. If the expression raises an exception there will be
no changes to _.

>>> "Hello, {0}" .format("World" ) 'Hello, World'

>>> _
'Hello, World'
>>> def wontchangethings():
... pass
>>> _
'Hello, World'
>>> 27 / 0
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module> ZeroDivisionError : division by zero

>>> _
'Hello, World'

Remember, this magic variable is only available in the interactive python

interpreter. Running scripts will not do this.
Section 109.3: Opening the Python console

The console for the primary version of Python can usually be opened by
typing py into your windows console or python on other platforms.

$ py
Python 3.4.3 (v3.4.3:9b73f1c3e601, Feb 24 2015 , 22 :44 :40 ) [MSC v.1600
64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 Type "help" , "copyright" , "credits" or
"license" for more information.
>>>

If you have multiple versions, then by default their executables will be

mapped to python2 or python3 respectively. This of course depends on
the Python executables being in your PATH.

Section 109.4: The PYTHONSTARTUP variable

You can set an environment variable called PYTHONSTARTUP for

Python's console. Whenever you enter the Python console, this file will be
executed, allowing for you to add extra functionality to the console such
as importing commonly-used modules automatically.

If the PYTHONSTARTUP variable was set to the location of a file

containing this:
print ( "Welcome!" )
Then opening the Python console would result in this extra output:

$ py
Python 3.4.3 (v3.4.3:9b73f1c3e601, Feb 24 2015, 22:44:40) [MSC v.1600
64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or
"license" for more information.
Welcome!
>>>

Section 109.5: Command line arguments

Python has a variety of command-line switches which can be passed to
py. These can be found by performing py - help , which gives this output
on Python 3.4:
Python Launcher
usage: py [ launcher-arguments ] [ python-arguments ] script [ script-
arguments ]
Launcher arguments:

-2 : Launch the latest Python 2.x version

-3 : Launch the latest Python 3.x version
-X.Y : Launch the specified Python version
-X.Y-32: Launch the specified 32bit Python version

The following help text is from Python:

usage: G:\\Python34\\python.exe [option] ... [-c cmd | -m mod | file | -]

[arg] ... Options and arguments (and corresponding environment
variables):
-b : issue warnings about str(bytes_instance), str(bytearray_instance)
and comparing bytes/bytearray with str. (-bb: issue errors)
-B : don't write .py[co] files on import; also
PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=x
-c cmd : program passed in as string (terminates option list)
-d : debug output from parser; also PYTHONDEBUG=x
-E : ignore PYTHON* environment variables (such as PYTHONPATH)
-h : print this help message and exit (also --help)
-i : inspect interactively after running script; forces a prompt even if
stdin does not appear to be a terminal; also PYTHONINSPECT=x
-I : isolate Python from the user's environment (implies -E and -s)
-m mod : run library module as a script (terminates option list)
-O : optimize generated bytecode slightly; also PYTHONOPTIMIZE=x
-OO : remove doc-strings in addition to the -O optimizations
-q : don't print version and copyright messages on interactive startup
-s : don't add user site directory to sys.path; also
PYTHONNOUSERSITE
-S : don't imply 'import site' on initialization
-u : unbuffered binary stdout and stderr, stdin always buffered; also
PYTHONUNBUFFERED=x
see man page for details on internal buffering relating to '-u'
-v : verbose (trace import statements); also PYTHONVERBOSE=x can
be supplied multiple times to increase verbosity
-V : print the Python version number and exit (also --version)
-W arg : warning control; arg is action:message:category:module:lineno
also PYTHONWARNINGS=arg
-x : skip first line of source, allowing use of non-Unix forms of #!cmd
-X opt : set implementation-specific option
file : program read from script file
- : program read from stdin (default; interactive mode if a tty) arg ...:
arguments passed to program in sys.argv[1:]

Other environment variables:

PYTHONSTARTUP: file executed on interactive startup (no default)
PYTHONPATH : ';'-separated list of directories prefixed to the default
module search path. The result is sys.path.
PYTHONHOME : alternate directory (or ;).
The default module search path uses \\lib.
PYTHONCASEOK : ignore case in 'import' statements (Windows).
PYTHONIOENCODING: Encoding[:errors] used for
stdin/stdout/stderr. PYTHONFAULTHANDLER: dump the Python
traceback on fatal errors. PYTHONHASHSEED: if this variable is set to
'random', a random value is used to seed the hashes of str, bytes and
datetime objects. It can also be set to an integer in the range
[0,4294967295] to get hash values with a predictable seed.

Section 109.6: Getting help about an object

The Python console adds a new function, help , which can be used to get
information about a function or object.
For a function, help prints its signature (arguments) and its docstring, if
the function has one.
>>> help ( print )
Help on built in function print in module builtins:
print (...)
print (value , ... , sep = ' ' , end = ' \n ' , file = sys .stdout , flush = False )
Prints the values to a stream , or to sys .stdout by default.
Optional keyword arguments:
file : a file-like object (stream); defaults to the current sys .stdout.
sep: string inserted between values, default a space.
end: string appended after the last value, default a newline.
flush: whether to forcibly flush the stream.

For an object, help lists the object's docstring and the different member
functions which the object has.

>>> x = 2
>>> help (x)
Help on int object :

class int (object )

| int (x= 0 ) > integer
| int (x, base= 10 ) > integer
|
| Convert a number or string to an integer, or return 0 if no arguments |
are given. If x is a number, return x.__int__ (). For floating point |
numbers, this truncates towards zero.
|
| If x is not a number or if base is given, then x must be a string , | bytes , or
bytearray instance representing an integer literal in the | given base. The
literal can be preceded by '+' or '-' and be surrounded | by whitespace. The
base defaults to 10 . Valid bases are 0 and 2 -36 . | Base 0 means to
interpret the base from the string as an integer literal. | >>> int ('0b100' ,
base= 0 )
|4
|
| Methods defined here:
|
| __abs__ (self , /)
| abs (self )
|
| __add__ (self , value, /)
| Return self +value...
Chapter 110: *args and **kwargs
Section 110.1: Using **kwargs when writing functions
You can define a function that takes an arbitrary number of keyword
(named) arguments by using the double star ** before a parameter
name:
def print_kwargs(**kwargs):
print (kwargs)
When calling the method, Python will construct a dictionary of all
keyword arguments and make it available in the function body:
print_kwargs(a = "two" , b = 3 )
# prints: "{a: "two", b=3}"
Note that the **kwargs parameter in the function definition must always
be the last parameter, and it will only match the arguments that were
passed in after the previous ones.
def example(a , **kw):
print kw
example(a = 2 , b = 3 , c = 4 ) # => {'b': 3, 'c': 4}
Inside the function body, kwargs is manipulated in the same way as a
dictionary; in order to access individual elements in kwargs you just loop
through them as you would with a normal dictionary:
def print_kwargs(**kwargs):
for key in kwargs:
print ( "key = {0}, value = {1}" .format(key , kwargs[key]))
Now, calling print_kwargs(a = "two" , b = 1 ) shows the following output:

print_kwargs(a = "two" , b = 1 )
key = a, value = "two"
key = b, value = 1

Section 110.2: Using *args when writing functions

You can use the star * when writing a function to collect all positional (ie.
unnamed) arguments in a tuple:

def print_args(farg, *args):

print ("formal arg: %s" % farg)
for arg in args:

print ( "another positional arg: %s" % arg)

Calling method:
print_args( 1 , "two" , 3 )
In that call, farg will be assigned as always, and the two others will be fed
into the args tuple, in the order they were received.

Section 110.3: Populating kwarg values with a dictionary

def foobar(foo = None , bar = None ):

return "{}{}" .format(foo , bar)
values = { "foo" : "foo" , "bar" : "bar" }
foobar(**values) # "foobar"

Section 110.4: Keyword-only and Keyword-required

arguments

Python 3 allows you to define function arguments which can only be

assigned by keyword, even without default values. This is done by using
star * to consume additional positional parameters without setting the
keyword parameters. All arguments after the * are keyword-only (i.e.
non-positional) arguments. Note that if keyword-only arguments aren't
given a default, they are still required when calling the function.

def print_args(arg1, *args, keyword_required, keyword_only= True ):

print ("first positional arg: {}" .format(arg1))
for arg in args:

print ("another positional arg: {}" .format(arg))

print ("keyword_required value: {}" .format(keyword_required))
print ("keyword_only value: {}" .format(keyword_only))

print (1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ) # TypeError: print_args() missing 1 required keyword-only

argument: 'keyword_required'
print (1 , 2 , 3 , keyword_required= 4 )
# first positional arg: 1
# another positional arg: 2
# another positional arg: 3
# keyword_required value: 4
# keyword_only value: True

Section 110.5: Using **kwargs when calling functions

You can use a dictionary to assign values to the function's parameters;
using parameters name as keys in the dictionary and the value of these
arguments bound to each key:

def test_func(arg1, arg2, arg3): # Usual function with three arguments

print ("arg1: %s" % arg1)
print ("arg2: %s" % arg2)
print ("arg3: %s" % arg3)

# Note that dictionaries are unordered, so we can switch arg2 and arg3.
Only the names matter. kwargs = { "arg3" : 3 , "arg2" : "two" }
# Bind the first argument (ie. arg1) to 1, and use the kwargs dictionary to
bind the others test_var_args_call( 1 , **kwargs)

Section 110.6: **kwargs and default values

To use default values with **kwargs

def fun(**kwargs):
print kwargs.get('value' , 0 )
fun()
# print 0
fun(value= 1 ) # print 1

Section 110.7: Using *args when calling functions

The effect of using the * operator on an argument when calling a
function is that of unpacking the list or a tuple argument
def print_args(arg1 , arg2):
print ( str (arg1) + str (arg2))
a=[1,2]
b = tuple ([ 3 , 4 ])

print_args(*a)
# 12
print_args(*b)
# 34

Note that the length of the starred argument need to be equal to the
number of the function's arguments.
A common python idiom is to use the unpacking operator * with the zip
function to reverse its effects:
a = [ 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 , 9 ] b = [ 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 , 10 ]
zipped = zip (a , b)
# [(1,2), (3,4), (5,6), (7,8), (9,10)]
zip (*zipped)
# (1,3,5,7,9), (2,4,6,8,10)

Chapter 111: Garbage Collection

Section 111.1: Reuse of primitive objects

An interesting thing to note which may help optimize your applications is

that primitives are actually also refcounted under the hood. Let's take a
look at numbers; for all integers between -5 and 256, Python always
reuses the same object:

>>> import sys

>>> sys .getrefcount(1 )
797
>>> a = 1
>>> b = 1
>>> sys .getrefcount(1 )
799

Note that the refcount increases, meaning that a and b reference the
same underlying object when they refer to the 1 primitive. However, for
larger numbers, Python actually doesn't reuse the underlying object:

>>> a = 999999999
>>> sys .getrefcount(999999999 ) 3
>>> b = 999999999
>>> sys .getrefcount(999999999 ) 3

Because the refcount for 999999999 does not change when assigning it to a
and b we can infer that they refer to two different underlying objects,
even though they both are assigned the same primitive.

Section 111.2: E ☐ ects of the del command

Removing a variable name from the scope using del v, or removing an

object from a collection using del v[item] or del [i:j], or removing an
attribute using del v.name, or any other way of removing references to
an object, does not trigger any destructor calls or any memory being
freed in and of itself. Objects are only destructed when their reference
count reaches zero.

>>> import gc
>>> gc .disable() # disable garbage collector
>>> class Track:

def __init__ (self ):

print ("Initialized" )
def __del__ (self ):
print ("Destructed" )
>>> def bar():
return Track()
>>> t = bar()
Initialized
>>> another_t = t # assign another reference
>>> print ("..." )
...
>>> del t # not destructed yet - another_t still refers to it >>> del another_t
final reference gone, object is destructed Destructed

Section 111.3: Reference Counting

The vast majority of Python memory management is handled with

reference counting.
Every time an object is referenced (e.g. assigned to a variable), its
reference count is automatically increased. When it is dereferenced (e.g.
variable goes out of scope), its reference count is automatically
decreased.
When the reference count reaches zero, the object is immediately
destroyed and the memory is immediately freed. Thus for the majority of
cases, the garbage collector is not even needed.
>>> import gc ; gc .disable() # disable garbage collector
>>> class Track:
def __init__ ( self ):
print ( "Initialized" )
def __del__ ( self ):
print ( "Destructed" )

>>> def foo():

Track()
# destructed immediately since no longer has any references
print ("---" )
t = Track()
# variable is referenced, so it's not destructed yet
print ("---" )
# variable is destructed when function exits

>>> foo()
Initialized
Destructed
--
Initialized
--
Destructed
To demonstrate further the concept of references:

>>> def bar():

return Track()
>>> t = bar()
Initialized
>>> another_t = t # assign another reference
>>> print ("..." )
...
>>> t = None # not destructed yet - another_t still refers to it
>>> another_t = None # final reference gone, object is destructed
Destructed

Section 111.4: Garbage Collector for Reference Cycles

The only time the garbage collector is needed is if you have a reference
cycle . The simples example of a reference cycle is one in which A refers
to B and B refers to A, while nothing else refers to either A or B. Neither
A or B are accessible from anywhere in the program, so they can safely
be destructed, yet their reference counts are 1 and so they cannot be
freed by the reference counting algorithm alone.

>>> import gc ; gc .disable() # disable garbage collector >>> class Track:

def __init__ ( self ):
print ( "Initialized" )
def __del__ ( self ):
print ( "Destructed" )

>>> A = Track()
Initialized
>>> B = Track()
Initialized
>>> A.other = B
>>> B.other = A
>>> del A; del B # objects are not destructed due to reference cycle >>> gc
.collect() # trigger collection
Destructed
Destructed
4

A reference cycle can be arbitrary long. If A points to B points to C

points to ... points to Z which points to A, then neither A through Z will
be collected, until the garbage collection phase:

>>> objs = [Track() for _ in range (10 )]

Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
Initialized
>>> for i in range (len (objs)1 ):
... objs[i].other = objs[i + 1 ]
...
>>> objs[1 ].other = objs[0 ] # complete the cycle
>>> del objs # no one can refer to objs now - still not destructed >>> gc
.collect()
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
Destructed
20

Section 111.5: Forcefully deallocating objects

You can force deallocate objects even if their refcount isn't 0 in both
Python 2 and 3.
Both versions use the ctypes module to do so.

WARNING: doing this will leave your Python environment unstable and
prone to crashing without a traceback! Using this method could also
introduce security problems (quite unlikely) Only deallocate objects
you're sure you'll never reference again. Ever.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

import ctypes
deallocated = 12345
ctypes.pythonapi._Py_Dealloc(ctypes.py_object(deallocated))

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

import ctypes, sys

deallocated = 12345
(ctypes.c_char * sys .getsizeof(deallocated)).from_address(id
(deallocated))[:4 ] = ' \x 00' * 4

After running, any reference to the now deallocated object will cause
Python to either produce undefined behavior or crash - without a
traceback. There was probably a reason why the garbage collector didn't
remove that object... If you deallocate None , you get a special message -
Fatal Python error: deallocating None before crashing.

Section 111.6: Viewing the refcount of an object

>>> import sys

>>> a = object ()
>>> sys .getrefcount(a)
2
>>> b = a
>>> sys .getrefcount(a)
3
>>> del b
>>> sys .getrefcount(a)
2

Section 111.7: Do not wait for the garbage collection to clean

up
The fact that the garbage collection will clean up does not mean that you
should wait for the garbage collection cycle to clean up.
In particular you should not wait for garbage collection to close file
handles, database connections and open network connections.
for example:
In the following code, you assume that the file will be closed on the next
garbage collection cycle, if f was the last reference to the file.
>>> f = open ( "test.txt" )
>>> del f
A more explicit way to clean up is to call f.close(). You can do it even
more elegant, that is by using the with statement, also known as the
context manager :

>>> with open ("test.txt" ) as f:

... pass
... # do something with f
>>> #now the f object still exists, but it is closed

The with statement allows you to indent your code under the open file.
This makes it explicit and easier to see how long a file is kept open. It
also always closes a file, even if an exception is raised in the while block.

Section 111.8: Managing garbage collection

There are two approaches for influencing when a memory cleanup is

performed. They are influencing how often the automatic process is
performed and the other is manually triggering a cleanup.
The garbage collector can be manipulated by tuning the collection
thresholds which affect the frequency at which the collector runs. Python
uses a generation based memory management system. New objects are
saved in the newest generation - generation0 and with each survived
collection, objects are promoted to older generations. After reaching the
last generation - generation2, they are no longer promoted.

The thresholds can be changed using the following snippet:

import gc
gc .set_threshold( 1000 , 100 , 10 ) # Values are just for demonstration purpose
The first argument represents the threshold for collecting generation0.
Every time the number of allocations exceeds the number of
deallocations by 1000 the garbage collector will be called.

The older generations are not cleaned at each run to optimize the
process. The second and third arguments are optional and control how
frequently the older generations are cleaned. If generation0 was
processed 100 times without cleaning generation1, then generation1 will
be processed. Similarly, objects in generation2 will be processed only
when the ones in generation1 were cleaned 10 times without touching
generation2.

One instance in which manually setting the thresholds is beneficial is

when the program allocates a lot of small objects without deallocating
them which leads to the garbage collector running too often (each
generation0_threshold object allocations). Even though, the collector is
pretty fast, when it runs on huge numbers of objects it poses a
performance issue. Anyway, there's no one size fits all strategy for
choosing the thresholds and it's use case dependable.

Manually triggering a collection can be done as in the following snippet:

import gc
gc .collect()

The garbage collection is automatically triggered based on the number of

allocations and deallocations, not on the consumed or available memory.
Consequently, when working with big objects, the memory might get
depleted before the automated cleanup is triggered. This makes a good
use case for manually calling the garbage collector.

Even though it's possible, it's not an encouraged practice. Avoiding

memory leaks is the best option. Anyway, in big projects detecting the
memory leak can be a tough task and manually triggering a garbage
collection can be used as a quick solution until further debugging.

For long-running programs, the garbage collection can be triggered on a

time basis or on an event basis. An example for the first one is a web
server that triggers a collection after a fixed number of requests. For the
later, a web server that triggers a garbage collection when a certain type
of request is received.

Chapter 112: Pickle data serialisation

Parameter object
file
protocol
buffer

Details
The object which is to be stored
The open file which will contain the object
The protocol used for pickling the object (optional parameter) A bytes
object that contains a serialized object

Section 112.1: Using Pickle to serialize and deserialize an object

The pickle module implements an algorithm for turning an arbitrary

Python object into a series of bytes. This process is also called serializing
the object. The byte stream representing the object can then be
transmitted or stored, and later reconstructed to create a new object
with the same characteristics.

For the simplest code, we use the dump() and load() functions.
To serialize the object
import pickle

# An arbitrary collection of objects supported by pickle.

data = {
'a' : [1 , 2.0 , 3 , 4 +6j],
'b' : ("character string" , b"byte string" ),
'c' : {None , True , False }
}

with open ('data.pickle' , 'wb' ) as f:

# Pickle the 'data' dictionary using the highest protocol available.
pickle .dump(data, f, pickle .HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)

To deserialize the object import pickle

with open ('data.pickle' , 'rb' ) as f:

# The protocol version used is detected automatically, so we do not # have
to specify it.
data = pickle .load(f)

Using pickle and byte objects

It is also possible to serialize into and deserialize out of byte objects,
using the dumps and loads function, which are equivalent to dump and
load.
serialized_data = pickle .dumps(data , pickle .HIGHEST_PROTOCOL) #
type(serialized_data) is bytes
deserialized_data = pickle .loads(serialized_data) # deserialized_data ==
data

Section 112.2: Customize Pickled Data

Some data cannot be pickled. Other data should not be pickled for other
reasons.
What will be pickled can be defined in __getstate__ method. This method
must return something that is picklable. On the opposite side is
__setstate__: it will receive what __getstate__ created and has to
initialize the object.
class A( object ):
def __init__ ( self , important_data): self .important_data = important_data
Add data which cannot be pickled: self .func = lambda : 7
# Add data which should never be pickled, because it expires quickly: self
.is_up_to_date = False
def __getstate__( self ):
return [ self .important_data] # only this is needed
def __setstate__( self , state): self .important_data = state[ 0 ]
self .func = lambda : 7 # just some hard-coded unpicklable function
self .is_up_to_date = False # even if it was before pickling
Now, this can be done:

>>> a1 = A('very important' )

>>>
>>> s = pickle .dumps(a1) # calls a1.__getstate__()
>>>
>>> a2 = pickle .loads(s) # calls a1.__setstate__(['very important']) >>> a2
< __main__ .A object at 0x0000000002742470 >
>>> a2.important_data
'very important'
>>> a2.func()
7

The implementation here pikles a list with one value: [self

.important_data]. That was just an example, __getstate__ could have
returned anything that is picklable, as long as __setstate__ knows how to
do the opposite. A good alternative is a dictionary of all values:
{'important_data' : self .important_data}.

Constructor is not called! Note that in the previous example instance a2

was created in pickle .loads without ever calling A.__init__ , so
A.__setstate__ had to initialize everything that __init__ would have
initialized if it were called.

Chapter 113: Binary Data

Section 113.1: Format a list of values into a byte object

from struct import pack

print (pack( 'I3c' , 123 , b 'a' , b 'b' , b 'c' )) # b'{\x00\x00\x00abc'

Section 113.2: Unpack a byte object according to a format

string

from struct import unpack

print (unpack( 'I3c' , b '{ \x 00 \x 00 \x 00abc' )) # (123, b'a', b'b', b'c')

Section 113.3: Packing a structure

The module "struct" provides facility to pack python objects as

contiguous chunk of bytes or dissemble a chunk of bytes to python
structures.
The pack function takes a format string and one or more arguments, and
returns a binary string. This looks very much like you are formatting a
string except that the output is not a string but a chunk of bytes.

import struct
import sys
print "Native byteorder: " , sys .byteorder
# If no byteorder is specified, native byteorder is used
buffer = struct .pack("ihb" , 3 , 4 , 5 )
print "Byte chunk: " , repr (buffer)
print "Byte chunk unpacked: " , struct .unpack("ihb" , buffer)
# Last element as unsigned short instead of unsigned char ( 2 Bytes)
buffer = struct .pack("ihh" , 3 , 4 , 5 )
print "Byte chunk: " , repr (buffer)

Output:
Native byteorder: little Byte chunk: '\x03\x00\x00\x00\x04\x00\x05' Byte
chunk unpacked: (3, 4, 5) Byte chunk:
'\x03\x00\x00\x00\x04\x00\x05\x00'
You could use network byte order with data received from network or
pack data to send it to network.

import struct
# If no byteorder is specified, native byteorder is used buffer = struct
.pack("hhh" , 3 , 4 , 5 )
print "Byte chunk native byte order: " , repr (buffer) buffer = struct
.pack("!hhh" , 3 , 4 , 5 )
print "Byte chunk network byte order: " , repr (buffer)

Output:
Byte chunk native byte order: '\x03\x00\x04\x00\x05\x00' Byte chunk
network byte order: '\x00\x03\x00\x04\x00\x05'
You can optimize by avoiding the overhead of allocating a new buffer by
providing a buffer that was created earlier.

import struct
from ctypes import create_string_buffer bufferVar =
create_string_buffer(8 )
bufferVar2 = create_string_buffer(8 )
# We use a buffer that has already been created # provide format, buffer,
offset and data struct .pack_into("hhh" , bufferVar, 0 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) print "Byte
chunk: " , repr (bufferVar.raw) struct .pack_into("hhh" , bufferVar2, 2 ,
4 , 5 ) print "Byte chunk: " , repr (bufferVar2.raw)

Output:
Byte chunk: '\x03\x00\x04\x00\x05\x00\x00\x00' Byte chunk:
'\x00\x00\x03\x00\x04\x00\x05\x00'

Chapter 114: Idioms

Section 114.1: Dictionary key initializations

Prefer dict .get method if you are not sure if the key is present. It allows
you to return a default value if key is not found. The traditional method
dict [key] would raise a KeyError exception.
Rather than doing
def add_student():
try :
students[ 'count' ] + = 1
except KeyError :
students[ 'count' ] = 1
Do
def add_student():
students[ 'count' ] = students.get( 'count' , 0 ) + 1
Section 114.2: Switching variables

To switch the value of two variables you can use tuple unpacking.

x = True
y = False
x, y = y, x
x
# False
y
# True

Section 114.3: Use truth value testing

Python will implicitly convert any object to a Boolean value for testing,
so use it wherever possible.
# Good examples, using implicit truth testing
if attr:
# do something
if not attr:
# do something
# Bad examples, using specific types
if attr == 1 :
# do something
if attr == True :
# do something
if attr != '' :
# do something
# If you are looking to specifically check for None, use 'is' or 'is not'
if attr is None :
# do something
This generally produces more readable code, and is usually much safer
when dealing with unexpected types. Click here for a list of what will be
evaluated to False .

Section 114.4: Test for "__main__" to avoid unexpected code

execution
It is good practice to test the calling program's __name__ variable before
executing your code.
import sys
def main():
# Your code starts here
# Don't forget to provide a return code return 0
if __name__ == "__main__" : sys .exit(main())
Using this pattern ensures that your code is only executed when you
expect it to be; for example, when you run your file explicitly:
python my_program.py

The benefit, however, comes if you decide to import your file in another
program (for example if you are writing it as part of a library). You can
then import your file, and the __main__ trap will ensure that no code is
executed unexpectedly:

# A new program file

import my_program # main() is not run
# But you can run main() explicitly if you really want it to run:
my_program.main()

Chapter 115: Data Serialization

Parameter Details
protocol
Using pickle or cPickle , it is the method that objects are being
Serialized/Unserialized. You probably want to use pickle
.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL here, which means the newest method.

Section 115.1: Serialization using JSON

JSON is a cross language, widely used method to serialize data
Supported data types : int , float , boolean , string , list and dict . See -> JSON
Wiki for more
Here is an example demonstrating the basic usage of JSON:
import json
families = ([ 'John' ] , [ 'Mark' , 'David' , { 'name' : 'Avraham' }])
# Dumping it into string
json_families = json.dumps(families)
# [["John"], ["Mark", "David", {"name": "Avraham"}]]

# Dumping it to file
with open ( 'families.json' , 'w' ) as json_file:
json.dump(families , json_file)
# Loading it from string
json_families = json.loads(json_families)

# Loading it from file

with open ('families.json' , 'r' ) as json_file:
json_families = json.load(json_file)

See JSON-Module for detailed information about JSON.

Section 115.2: Serialization using Pickle

Here is an example demonstrating the basic usage of pickle:
# Importing pickle
try :
import cPickle as pickle # Python 2
except ImportError :
import pickle # Python 3
# Creating Pythonic object:
class Family( object ):
def __init__ ( self , names):
self .sons = names
def __str__ ( self ):
return ' ' .join( self .sons)
my_family = Family([ 'John' , 'David' ])
# Dumping to string
pickle_data = pickle .dumps(my_family , pickle .HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)
# Dumping to file
with open ( 'family.p' , 'w' ) as pickle_file:
pickle .dump(families , pickle_file , pickle .HIGHEST_PROTOCOL) #
Loading from string
my_family = pickle .loads(pickle_data)
# Loading from file
with open ( 'family.p' , 'r' ) as pickle_file: my_family = pickle .load(pickle_file)
See Pickle for detailed information about Pickle.
WARNING: The official documentation for pickle makes it clear that
there are no security guarantees. Don't load any data you don't trust its
origin.

Chapter 116: Multiprocessing

Section 116.1: Running Two Simple Processes

A simple example of using multiple processes would be two processes

(workers) that are executed separately. In the following example, two
processes are started:
countUp() counts 1 up, every second.
countDown() counts 1 down, every second.

import multiprocessing
import time
from random import randint

def countUp():
i=0
while i <= 3 :

print ('Up: \t {}' .format(i))

time .sleep(randint(1 , 3 )) # sleep 1, 2 or 3 seconds
i += 1

def countDown():
i=3
while i >= 0 :

print ('Down: \t {}' .format(i))

time .sleep(randint(1 , 3 )) # sleep 1, 2 or 3 seconds
i=1
if __name__ == '__main__' :
# Initiate the workers.
workerUp = multiprocessing.Process(target= countUp)
workerDown = multiprocessing.Process(target= countDown)

# Start the workers. workerUp.start() workerDown.start()

# Join the workers. This will block in the main (parent) process # until the
workers are complete.
workerUp.join()
workerDown.join()

The output is as follows:

Up: 0
Down: 3 Up: 1
Up: 2
Down: 2 Up: 3
Down: 1 Down: 0

Section 116.2: Using Pool and Map

from multiprocessing import Pool
def cube(x):
return x ** 3

if __name__ == "__main__" :
pool = Pool(5 )
result = pool.map (cube, [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 ])

Pool is a class which manages multiple Workers (processes) behind the

scenes and lets you, the programmer, use.
Pool( 5 ) creates a new Pool with 5 processes, and pool. map works just like
map but it uses multiple processes (the amount defined when creating the
pool).
Similar results can be achieved using map_async, apply and apply_async
which can be found in the documentation .
Chapter 117: Multithreading
Threads allow Python programs to handle multiple functions at once as
opposed to running a sequence of commands individually. This topic
explains the principles behind threading and demonstrates its usage.

Section 117.1: Basics of multithreading

Using the threading module, a new thread of execution may be started by

creating a new threading .Thread and assigning it a function to execute:
import threading
def foo():
print "Hello threading!"
my_thread = threading .Thread(target = foo)
The target parameter references the function (or callable object) to be
run. The thread will not begin execution until start is called on the
Thread object.
Starting a Thread
my_thread.start() # prints 'Hello threading!'

Now that my_thread has run and terminated, calling start again will
produce a RuntimeError . If you'd like to run your thread as a daemon,
passing the daemon= True kwarg, or setting my_thread.daemon to True
before calling start(), causes your Thread to run silently in the
background as a daemon.

Joining a Thread
In cases where you split up one big job into several small ones and want
to run them concurrently, but need to wait for all of them to finish before
continuing, Thread.join() is the method you're looking for.
For example, let's say you want to download several pages of a website
and compile them into a single page. You'd do this:

import requests
from threading import Thread
from queue import Queue
q = Queue (maxsize = 20 )
def put_page_to_q(page_num):
q.put(requests.get( 'http://some-website.com/page_%s.html' %
page_num)

def compile (q):

# magic function that needs all pages before being able to be executed
if not q.full():

raise ValueError
else :
print ("Done compiling!" )

threads = []
for page_num in range (20 ):
t = Thread(target= requests.get, args= (page_num, ))
t.start()
threads.append(t)

# Next, join all threads to make sure all threads are done running before #
we continue. join() is a blocking call (unless specified otherwise using # the
kwarg blocking=False when calling join)
for t in threads:

t.join()
# Call compile() now, since all threads have completed compile (q)
A closer look at how join() works can be found here .
Create a Custom Thread Class
Using threading .Thread class we can subclass new custom Thread class.
we must override run method in a subclass.
from threading import Thread import time
class Sleepy(Thread):

def run(self ):
time .sleep(5 )
print ("Hello form Thread" )

if __name__ == "__main__" :
t = Sleepy()
t.start() # start method automatic call Thread class run method. # print
'The main program continues to run in foreground.' t.join()
print ("The main program continues to run in the foreground." )

Section 117.2: Communicating between threads

There are multiple threads in your code and you need to safely
communicate between them.
You can use a Queue from the queue library.
from queue import Queue
from threading import Thread
# create a data producer
def producer(output_queue):
while True :
data = data_computation()
output_queue.put(data)
# create a consumer
def consumer(input_queue):
while True :
# retrieve data (blocking)
data = input_queue.get()
# do something with the data
# indicate data has been consumed
input_queue.task_done()
Creating producer and consumer threads with a shared queue

q = Queue ()
t1 = Thread(target= consumer, args= (q, )) t2 = Thread(target=
producer, args= (q, )) t1.start()
t2.start()

Section 117.3: Creating a worker pool

Using threading & queue:

from socket import socket , AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM from threading

import Thread
from queue import Queue

def echo_server(addr, nworkers):

print ('Echo server running at' , addr)
# Launch the client workers
q = Queue ()
for n in range (nworkers):

t = Thread(target= echo_client, args= (q, )) t.daemon = True

t.start()

# Run the server

sock = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
sock.bind(addr)
sock.listen(5 )
while True :

client_sock , client_addr = sock.accept() q.put((client_sock , client_addr))

echo_server(( '' , 15000 ) , 128 )
Using concurrent.futures.Threadpoolexecutor:
from socket import AF_INET , SOCK_STREAM , socket from
concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

def echo_server(addr):
print ('Echo server running at' , addr)
pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(128 )
sock = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
sock.bind(addr)
sock.listen(5 )
while True :

client_sock , client_addr = sock.accept() pool.submit(echo_client ,

client_sock , client_addr)
echo_server(( '' , 15000 ))
Python Cookbook, 3rd edition, by David Beazley and Brian K. Jones (O ’
Reilly). Copyright 2013 David Beazley and Brian Jones, 978-1-449-34037-
7.
Section 117.4: Advanced use of multithreads

This section will contain some of the most advanced examples realized
using Multithreading.
Advanced printer (logger)
A thread that prints everything is received and modifies the output
according to the terminal width. The nice part is that also the "already
written" output is modified when the width of the terminal changes.
#!/usr/bin/env python2

import threading
import Queue
import time
import sys
import subprocess
from backports.shutil_get_terminal_size import get_terminal_size

printq = Queue .Queue () interrupt = False

lines = []

def main():

ptt = threading .Thread(target= printer) # Turn the printer on ptt.daemon

= True
ptt.start()

# Stupid example of stuff to print

for i in xrange ( 1 , 100 ):
printq.put( ' ' .join([ str (x) for x in range ( 1 , i)])) # The actual way to send stuff
to the printer
time .sleep( .5 )

def split_line(line, cols):

if len (line) > cols:
new_line = ''

ww = line.split()
i=0
while len (new_line) <= (cols - len (ww[i]) - 1 ):

new_line + = ww[i] + ' '

i += 1
print len (new_line)

if new_line == '' :
return (line , '' )

return (new_line, ' ' .join(ww[i:])) else :

return (line, '' )

def printer():

while True :
cols, rows = get_terminal_size() # Get the terminal dimensions msg = '#' +
'-' * (cols - 2 ) + '# \n ' # Create the try :

new_line = str (printq.get_nowait())

if new_line != '!@#EXIT#@!' : # A nice way to turn the printer

# thread out gracefully lines.append(new_line)

printq.task_done()

else :
printq.task_done()
sys .exit()

except Queue .Empty: pass

# Build the new message to show and split too long lines for line in lines:
res = line # The following is to split lines which are

# longer than cols.

while len (res) != 0 :
toprint, res = split_line(res, cols)
msg += ' \n ' + toprint

# Clear the shell and print the new output

subprocess .check_call('clear' ) # Keep the shell clean sys
.stdout.write(msg)
sys .stdout.flush()
time .sleep(.5 )

Section 117.5: Stoppable Thread with a while Loop

import threading
import time

class StoppableThread(threading .Thread):

"""Thread class with a stop() method. The thread itself has to check
regularly for the stopped() condition."""

def __init__ (self ):

super (StoppableThread, self ).__init__ ()
self ._stop_event = threading .Event()

def stop( self ):

self ._stop_event. set ()

def join(self , *args, **kwargs):

self .stop()
super (StoppableThread, self ).join(*args, **kwargs)

def run()
while not self ._stop_event.is_set():
print ("Still running!" )
time .sleep(2 )

print ( "stopped!"
Based on this Question .

Chapter 118: Processes and Threads

Most programs are executed line by line, only running a single process at
a time. Threads allow multiple processes to flow independent of each
other. Threading with multiple processors permits programs to run
multiple processes simultaneously. This topic documents the
implementation and usage of threads in Python.

Section 118.1: Global Interpreter Lock

Python multithreading performance can often suffer due to the Global

Interpreter Lock . In short, even though you can have multiple threads
in a Python program, only one bytecode instruction can execute in
parallel at any one time, regardless of the number of CPUs.

As such, multithreading in cases where operations are blocked by

external events - like network access - can be quite effective:
import threading
import time
def process(): time .sleep( 2 )

start = time .time ()

process()
print ("One run took %.2fs" % (time .time () - start))

start = time .time ()

threads = [threading .Thread(target= process) for _ in range (4 )] for t in
threads:

t.start()
for t in threads:
t.join()
print ("Four runs took %.2fs" % (time .time () - start))

# Out: One run took 2.00s # Out: Four runs took 2.00s
Note that even though each process took 2 seconds to execute, the four
processes together were able to effectively run in parallel, taking 2
seconds total.
However, multithreading in cases where intensive computations are
being done in Python code - such as a lot of computation - does not result
in much improvement, and can even be slower than running in parallel:
import threading import time
def somefunc(i): return i * i
def otherfunc(m , i): return m + i

def process():
for j in range (100 ): result = 0
for i in range (100000 ):

result = otherfunc(result , somefunc(i))

start = time .time ()

process()
print ("One run took %.2fs" % (time .time () - start))

start = time .time ()

threads = [threading .Thread(target= process) for _ in range (4 )] for t in
threads:

t.start()
for t in threads:
t.join()
print ("Four runs took %.2fs" % (time .time () - start))

# Out: One run took 2.05s # Out: Four runs took 14.42s
In the latter case, multiprocessing can be effective as multiple processes
can, of course, execute multiple instructions simultaneously:
import multiprocessing import time
def somefunc(i): return i * i
def otherfunc(m , i): return m + i

def process():
for j in range (100 ):
result = 0
for i in range (100000 ):

result = otherfunc(result , somefunc(i))

start = time .time ()

process()
print ("One run took %.2fs" % (time .time () - start))
start = time .time ()
processes = [multiprocessing.Process(target= process) for _ in range (4 )]
for p in processes:

p.start()
for p in processes:
p.join()
print ("Four runs took %.2fs" % (time .time () - start))

# Out: One run took 2.07s # Out: Four runs took 2.30s

Section 118.2: Running in Multiple Threads

Use threading .Thread to run a function in another thread.
import threading import os
def process():
print ( "Pid is %s, thread id is %s" % ( os .getpid() , threading
.current_thread().name))

threads = [threading .Thread(target= process) for _ in range (4 )] for t in

threads:
t.start()
for t in threads:

t.join()

# Out: Pid is 11240, thread id is Thread-1

# Out: Pid is 11240, thread id is Thread-2
# Out: Pid is 11240, thread id is Thread-3
# Out: Pid is 11240, thread id is Thread-4

Section 118.3: Running in Multiple Processes

Use multiprocessing.Process to run a function in another process. The
interface is similar to threading .Thread:
import multiprocessing
import os
def process():
print ( "Pid is %s" % ( os .getpid() , ))
processes = [multiprocessing.Process(target = process) for _ in range ( 4 )]
for p in processes:
p.start()
for p in processes:
p.join()

# Out: Pid is 11206

# Out: Pid is 11207
# Out: Pid is 11208
# Out: Pid is 11209

Section 118.4: Sharing State Between Threads

As all threads are running in the same process, all threads have access to
the same data.
However, concurrent access to shared data should be protected with a
lock to avoid synchronization issues.
import threading
obj = {}
obj_lock = threading .Lock()

def objify(key, val):

print ("Obj has %d values" % len (obj))
with obj_lock:

obj[key] = val
print ( "Obj now has %d values" % len (obj))
ts = [ threading .Thread(target = objify , args = ( str (n) , n)) for n in range
ts:
t.start()

for t in ts:
t.join()
print ("Obj final result:" )
import pprint ; pprint .pprint (obj)
# Out: Obj has 0 values
# Out: Obj has 0 values
# Out: Obj now has 1 values
# Out: Obj now has 2 valuesObj has 2 values # Out: Obj now has 3 values
# Out:
# Out: Obj has 3 values
# Out: Obj now has 4 values
# Out: Obj final result:
# Out: {'0': 0, '1': 1, '2': 2, '3': 3}

Section 118.5: Sharing State Between Processes

Code running in different processes do not, by default, share the same
data. However, the multiprocessing module contains primitives to help
share values across multiple processes.
import multiprocessing

plain_num = 0
shared_num = multiprocessing.Value('d' , 0 )
lock = multiprocessing.Lock()

def increment():
global plain_num
with lock:

# ordinary variable modifications are not visible across processes

plain_num += 1
# multiprocessing.Value modifications are
shared_num.value += 1

ps = [multiprocessing.Process(target = increment) for n in range ( 4 )] for

p.start()
for p in ps:
p.join()
print ( "plain_num is %d, shared_num is %d" % (plain_num ,
shared_num.value)) # Out: plain_num is 0, shared_num is 4
Chapter 119: Python concurrency
Section 119.1: The multiprocessing module
from __future__ import print_function
import multiprocessing

def countdown(count):
while count > 0 :
print ("Count value" , count) count = 1

return

if __name__ == "__main__" :
p1 = multiprocessing.Process(target= countdown, args= (10 , )) p1.start()

p2 = multiprocessing.Process(target = countdown , args = ( 20 , )) p2.start()

p1.join() p2.join()
Here, each function is executed in a new process. Since a new instance of
Python VM is running the code, there is no GIL and you get parallelism
running on multiple cores.
The Process.start method launches this new process and run the function
passed in the target argument with the arguments args. The Process.join
method waits for the end of the execution of processes p1 and p2.
The new processes are launched differently depending on the version of
python and the platform on which the code is running e.g. :

Windows uses spawn to create the new process.

With unix systems and version earlier than 3.3, the processes are created
using a fork. Note that this method does not respect the POSIX usage of
fork and thus leads to unexpected behaviors, especially when interacting
with other multiprocessing libraries.
With unix system and version 3.4+, you can choose to start the new
processes with either fork, forkserver or spawn using
multiprocessing.set_start_method at the beginning of your program.
forkserver and spawn methods are slower than forking but avoid some
unexpected behaviors.
POSIX fork usage:

After a fork in a multithreaded program, the child can safely call only
async-signal-safe functions until such time as it calls execve.
(see )

Using fork, a new process will be launched with the exact same state for
all the current mutex but only the MainThread will be launched. This is
unsafe as it could lead to race conditions e.g. :

If you use a Lock in MainThread and pass it to another thread which is

supposed to lock it at some point. If the fork occurs simultaneously, the
new process will start with a locked lock which will never be released as
the second thread does not exist in this new process.
Actually, this kind of behavior should not occurred in pure python as
multiprocessing handles it properly but if you are interacting with other
library, this kind of behavior can occurs, leading to crash of your system
(for instance with numpy/accelerated on macOS).

Section 119.2: The threading module

from __future__ import print_function

import threading
def counter(count):

while count > 0 :

print ("Count value" , count)
count = 1

return

t1 = threading .Thread(target= countdown, args= (10 , )) t1.start()

t2 = threading .Thread(target= countdown, args= (20 , )) t2.start()

In certain implementations of Python such as CPython, true parallelism

is not achieved using threads because of using what is known as the GIL,
or Global Interpreter Lock.
Here is an excellent overview of Python concurrency: Python
concurrency by David Beazley (YouTube)

Section 119.3: Passing data between multiprocessing processes

Because data is sensitive when dealt with between two threads (think
concurrent read and concurrent write can conflict with one another,
causing race conditions), a set of unique objects were made in order to
facilitate the passing of data back and forth between threads. Any truly
atomic operation can be used between threads, but it is always safe to
stick with Queue.

import multiprocessing
import queue
my_Queue= multiprocessing.Queue ()
#Creates a queue with an undefined maximum size
#this can be dangerous as the queue becomes increasingly large #it will
take a long time to copy data to/from each read/write thread

Most people will suggest that when using queue, to always place the
queue data in a try: except: block instead of using empty. However, for
applications where it does not matter if you skip a scan cycle (data can
be placed in the queue while it is flipping states from queue.Empty==
True to queue.Empty== False ) it is usually better to place read and write
access in what I call an Iftry block, because an 'if' statement is
technically more performant than catching the exception.

import multiprocessing
import queue
'''Import necessary Python standard libraries, multiprocessing for
classes and queue for the queue exceptions it provides'''
def Queue_Iftry_Get(get_queue, default= None , use_default= False , func
None , use_func= False ):

'''This global method for the Iftry block is provided for its reuse and
standard functionality, the if also saves on performance as opposed to
catching the exception, which is expensive.
It also allows the user to specify a function for the outgoing data to use,
and a default value to return if the function cannot return the value from
the queue''' if get_queue.empty():
if use_default:
return default
else :

try :
value = get_queue.get_nowait()
except queue.Empty:
if use_default:
return default
else :
if use_func:
return func(value)
else :
return value
def Queue_Iftry_Put(put_queue, value):
'''This global method for the Iftry block is provided because of its reuse
and
standard functionality, the If also saves on performance as opposed to
catching the exception, which is expensive.
Return True if placing value in the queue was successful. Otherwise,
false''' if put_queue.full():
return False
else :
try :
put_queue.put_nowait(value)
except queue.Full:
return False
else :
return True

Chapter 120: Parallel computation

Section 120.1: Using the multiprocessing module to parallelise
tasks
import multiprocessing

def fib(n):
"""computing the Fibonacci in an inefficient way
was chosen to slow down the CPU."""
if n <= 2 :

return 1
else :
return fib(n1 )+fib(n2 )
p = multiprocessing.Pool()
print (p.map (fib, [38 , 37 , 36 , 35 , 34 , 33 ]))

# Out: [39088169, 24157817, 14930352, 9227465, 5702887, 3524578]

As the execution of each call to fib happens in parallel, the time of
execution of the full example is 1.8× faster than if done in a sequential
way on a dual processor.
Python 2.2+

Section 120.2: Using a C-extension to parallelize tasks

The idea here is to move the computationally intensive jobs to C (using
special macros), independent of Python, and have the C code release the
GIL while it's working.

#include "Python.h"
...
PyObject *pyfunc(PyObject *self, PyObject *args) {

...
Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS
// Threaded C code
...
Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS
...

}
Section 120.3: Using Parent and Children scripts to execute
code in parallel

child.py
import time

def main():
print "starting work"
time .sleep(1 )
print "work work work work work"
time .sleep(1 )
print "done working"

if __name__ == '__main__' :
main()
parent.py
import os
def main():
for i in range ( 5 ):
os .system( "python child.py &" ) if __name__ == '__main__' : main()

This is useful for parallel, independent HTTP request/response tasks or

Database select/inserts. Command line arguments can be given to the
child.py script as well. Synchronization between scripts can be achieved
by all scripts regularly checking a separate server (like a Redis instance).

Section 120.4: Using PyPar module to parallelize

PyPar is a library that uses the message passing interface (MPI) to

provide parallelism in Python. A simple example in PyPar (as seen at
https://github.com/daleroberts/pypar) looks like this:
import pypar as pp

ncpus = pp.size()
rank = pp.rank()
node = pp.get_processor_name()
print 'I am rank %d of %d on node %s' % (rank , ncpus , node)

if rank == 0 :
msh = 'P0'
pp.send(msg, destination= 1 )
msg = pp.receive(source= rank1 )
print 'Processor 0 received message "%s" from rank %d' % (msg, rank1
)

else :
source = rank1
destination = (rank+1 ) % ncpus
msg = pp.receive(source)
msg = msg + 'P' + str (rank)
pypar.send(msg, destination)

pp.finalize()

Chapter 121: Sockets

Parameter socket.AF_UNIX socket.AF_INET socket.AF_INET6

Description UNIX Socket IPv4

IPv6

socket.SOCK_STREAM TCP socket.SOCK_DGRAM UDP

Many programming languages use sockets to communicate across

processes or between devices. This topic explains proper usage the
sockets module in Python to facilitate sending and receiving data over
common networking protocols.

Section 121.1: Raw Sockets on Linux

First you disable your network card's automatic checksumming:
sudo ethtool -K eth1 tx off
Then send your packet, using a SOCK_RAW socket:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from socket import socket , AF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW s = socket
(AF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW)
s.bind(("eth1" , 0 ))

# We're putting together an ethernet frame here, # but you could have
anything you want instead # Have a look at the 'struct' module for more #
flexible packing/unpacking of binary data
# and 'binascii' for 32 bit CRC
src_addr = " \x 01 \x 02 \x 03 \x 04 \x 05 \x 06"
dst_addr = " \x 01 \x 02 \x 03 \x 04 \x 05 \x 06"
payload = ("[" *30 )+"PAYLOAD" +("]" *30 )
checksum = " \x 1a \x 2b \x 3c \x 4d"
ethertype = " \x 08 \x 01"

s.send(dst_addr+src_addr+ethertype+payload+checksum)

Section 121.2: Sending data via UDP

UDP is a connectionless protocol. Messages to other processes or

computers are sent without establishing any sort of connection. There is
no automatic confirmation if your message has been received. UDP is
usually used in latency sensitive applications or in applications sending
network wide broadcasts.

The following code sends a message to a process listening on localhost

port 6667 using UDP
Note that there is no need to "close" the socket after the send, because
UDP is connectionless .

from socket import socket , AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM

s = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM)
msg = ("Hello you there!" ).encode('utf-8' ) # socket.sendto() takes bytes
as input, hence we must encode the string first.
s.sendto(msg, ('localhost' , 6667 ))

Section 121.3: Receiving data via UDP

UDP is a connectionless protocol. This means that peers sending
messages do not require establishing a connection before sending
messages. socket .recvfromthus returns a tuple (msg [the message the
socket received], addr [the address of the sender])

A UDP server using solely the socket module:

from socket import socket , AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM sock = socket

(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM)
sock.bind(('localhost' , 6667 ))

while True :
msg, addr = sock.recvfrom(8192 ) # This is the amount of bytes to read at
maximum print ("Got message from %s: %s" % (addr, msg))

Below is an alternative implementation using socketserver.UDPServer:

from socketserver import BaseRequestHandler , UDPServer

class MyHandler(BaseRequestHandler):
def handle(self ):
print ("Got connection from: %s" % self .client_address)
msg, sock = self .request
print ("It said: %s" % msg)
sock.sendto("Got your message!" .encode(), self .client_address) # Send
reply

serv = UDPServer(( 'localhost' , 6667 ) , MyHandler) serv.serve_forever()

By default, sockets block. This means that execution of the script will
wait until the socket receives data.

Section 121.4: Sending data via TCP

Sending data over the internet is made possible using multiple modules.
The sockets module provides low-level access to the underlying
Operating System operations responsible for sending or receiving data
from other computers or processes.

The following code sends the byte string b 'Hello' to a TCP server
listening on port 6667 on the host localhost and closes the connection
when finished:

from socket import socket , AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM

s = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect(('localhost' , 6667 )) # The address of the TCP server listening
s.send(b'Hello' )
s.close()

Socket output is blocking by default, that means that the program will
wait in the connect and send calls until the action is 'completed'. For
connect that means the server actually accepting the connection. For
send it only means that the operating system has enough buffer space to
queue the data to be send later.

Sockets should always be closed after use.

Section 121.5: Multi-threaded TCP Socket Server

When run with no arguments, this program starts a TCP socket server
that listens for connections to 127.0.0.1 on port 5000 . The server handles
each connection in a separate thread.

When run with the -c argument, this program connects to the server,
reads the client list, and prints it out. The client list is transferred as a
JSON string. The client name may be specified by passing the -n
argument. By passing different names, the effect on the client list may be
observed.

client_list.py

import argparse import json

import socket import threading

def handle_client(client_list, conn, address):

name = conn.recv(1024 )
entry = dict (zip (['name' , 'address' , 'port' ], [name, address[0 ], address[
]])) client_list[name] = entry
conn.sendall(json.dumps(client_list))
conn.shutdown(socket .SHUT_RDWR)
conn.close()

def server(client_list):
print "Starting server..."
s = socket .socket (socket .AF_INET, socket .SOCK_STREAM)
s.setsockopt(socket .SOL_SOCKET, socket .SO_REUSEADDR, 1 )
s.bind(('127.0.0.1' , 5000 ))
s.listen(5 )
while True :

(conn , address) = s.accept()

t = threading .Thread(target= handle_client, args= (client_list, conn,
address)) t.daemon = True
t.start()

def client(name):
s = socket .socket (socket .AF_INET, socket .SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect(('127.0.0.1' , 5000 ))
s.send(name)
data = s.recv(1024 )
result = json.loads(data)
print json.dumps(result, indent= 4 )

def parse_arguments():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser .add_argument('-c' , dest= 'client' , action= 'store_true' ) parser
.add_argument('-n' , dest= 'name' , type = str , default= 'name' ) result =
parser .parse_args()
return result

def main():
client_list = dict () args = parse_arguments() if args.client:

client(args.name) else :
try :
server(client_list)
except KeyboardInterrupt : print "Keyboard interrupt"

if __name__ == '__main__' : main()

Server Output
$ python client_list.py Starting server...
Client Output
$ python client_list.py -c -n name1 {

"name1" : {
"address" : "127.0.0.1" , "port" : 62210 ,
"name" : "name1"

}
}
The receive buffers are limited to 1024 bytes. If the JSON string
representation of the client list exceeds this size, it will be truncated. This
will cause the following exception to be raised:
ValueError : Unterminated string starting at: line 1 column 1023 (char 1022

Chapter 122: Websockets

Section 122.1: Simple Echo with aiohttp

aiohttp provides asynchronous websockets.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.5

import asyncio
from aiohttp import ClientSession

with ClientSession() as session:

async def hello_world():
websocket = await session.ws_connect( "wss://echo.websocket.org" )
websocket.send_str( "Hello, world!" )
print ( "Received:" , (await websocket.receive()).data)
await websocket.close()
loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(hello_world())
Section 122.2: Wrapper Class with aiohttp

aiohttp.ClientSession may be used as a parent for a custom WebSocket

class.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.5

import asyncio
from aiohttp import ClientSession

class EchoWebSocket(ClientSession):
URL = "wss://echo.websocket.org"

def __init__ (self ):

super ().__init__ ()
self .websocket = None

async def connect(self ):

"""Connect to the WebSocket."""
self .websocket = await self .ws_connect(self .URL)

async def send(self , message):

"""Send a message to the WebSocket."""
assert self .websocket is not None , "You must connect first!" self
.websocket.send_str(message)
print ("Sent:" , message)

async def receive(self ):

"""Receive one message from the WebSocket."""
assert self .websocket is not None , "You must connect first!" return (await
self .websocket.receive()).data

async def read(self ):

"""Read messages from the WebSocket."""
assert self .websocket is not None , "You must connect first!"

while self .websocket.receive(): message = await self .receive() print

("Received:" , message) if message == "Echo 9!" :
break

async def send(websocket):

for n in range (10 ):
await websocket.send("Echo {}!" .format(n)) await asyncio.sleep(1 )

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
with EchoWebSocket() as websocket:
loop.run_until_complete(websocket.connect())

tasks = (
send(websocket), websocket.read()

)
loop.run_until_complete(asyncio.wait(tasks)) loop.close()

Section 122.3: Using Autobahn as a Websocket Factory

The Autobahn package can be used for Python web socket server
factories.
Python Autobahn package documentation
To install, typically one would simply use the terminal command
(For Linux):
sudo pip install autobahn
(For Windows):
python -m pip install autobahn
Then, a simple echo server can be created in a Python script:

from autobahn.asyncio.websocket import WebSocketServerProtocol

class MyServerProtocol(WebSocketServerProtocol):
'''When creating server protocol, the
user defined class inheriting the
WebSocketServerProtocol needs to override
the onMessage, onConnect, et-c events for
user specified functionality, these events
define your server's protocol, in essence'''
def onMessage(self , payload, isBinary):
'''The onMessage routine is called
when the server receives a message.
It has the required arguments payload
and the bool isBinary. The payload is the
actual contents of the "message" and isBinary
is simply a flag to let the user know that
the payload contains binary data. I typically
elsewise assume that the payload is a string.
In this example, the payload is returned to sender verbatim.''' self
.sendMessage(payload, isBinary)
if__name__== '__main__' :
try :
importasyncio
except ImportError :
'''Trollius = 0.3 was renamed'''
import trollius as asyncio
from autobahn.asyncio.websocketimportWebSocketServerFactory
factory= WebSocketServerFactory()
'''Initialize the websocket factory, and set the protocol to the
above defined protocol(the class that inherits from
autobahn.asyncio.websocket.WebSocketServerProtocol)'''
factory.protocol= MyServerProtocol
'''This above line can be thought of as "binding" the methods
onConnect, onMessage, et-c that were described in the
MyServerProtocol class
to the server, setting the servers functionality, ie, protocol'''
loop= asyncio.get_event_loop()
coro= loop.create_server(factory, '127.0.0.1' , 9000 )
server= loop.run_until_complete(coro)
'''Run the server in an infinite loop'''
try :
loop.run_forever()
except KeyboardInterrupt : pass
finally :
server.close()
loop.close()

In this example, a server is being created on the localhost (127.0.0.1) on

port 9000. This is the listening IP and port. This is important
information, as using this, you could identify your computer's LAN
address and port forward from your modem, though whatever routers
you have to the computer. Then, using google to investigate your WAN
IP, you could design your website to send WebSocket messages to your
WAN IP, on port 9000 (in this example).

It is important that you port forward from your modem back, meaning
that if you have routers daisy chained to the modem, enter into the
modem's configuration settings, port forward from the modem to the
connected router, and so forth until the final router your computer is
connected to is having the information being received on modem port
9000 (in this example) forwarded to it.

Chapter 123: Sockets And Message

Encryption/Decryption Between Client and
Server
Cryptography is used for security purposes. There are not so many
examples of Encryption/Decryption in Python using IDEA encryption
MODE CTR. Aim of this documentation :

Extend and implement of the RSA Digital Signature scheme in station-

to-station communication. Using Hashing for integrity of message, that is
SHA-1. Produce simple Key Transport protocol. Encrypt Key with
IDEA encryption. Mode of Block Cipher is Counter Mode

Section 123.1: Server side Implementation

import socket
import hashlib
import os
import time
import itertools
import threading
import sys
import Crypto.Cipher.AES as AES
from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
from CryptoPlus.Cipher import IDEA

#server address and port number input from admin

host= raw_input ("Server Address - > " )
port = int (input ("Port - > " ))
#boolean for checking server and port
check = False
done = False

def animate():
for c in itertools .cycle([ '....' , '.......' , '..........' , '............' ]): if done:

break
sys .stdout.write(' \r CHECKING IP ADDRESS AND NOT USED PORT
' +c) sys .stdout.flush()
time .sleep(0.1 )

sys .stdout.write(' \r -----SERVER STARTED. WAITING FOR CLIENT-

--- \n ' ) try :
#setting up socket
server = socket .socket (socket .AF_INET, socket .SOCK_STREAM)
server.bind((host, port))
server.listen(5 )
check = True
except BaseException:
print "-----Check Server Address or Port-----"
check = False

if check is True :
# server Quit
shutdown = False

# printing "Server Started Message"

thread_load = threading .Thread(target= animate) thread_load.start()

time .sleep(4 ) done = True

#binding client and address
client, address = server.accept()
print ("CLIENT IS CONNECTED. CLIENT'S ADDRESS ->" , address)
print (" \n -----WAITING FOR PUBLIC KEY & PUBLIC KEY HASH---
- \n " )

#client's message(Public Key) getpbk = client.recv( 2048 )

#conversion of string to KEY
server_public_key = RSA.importKey(getpbk)

#hashing the public key in server side for validating the hash from client
hash_object = hashlib.sha1(getpbk)
hex_digest = hash_object.hexdigest()

if getpbk != "" :
print (getpbk)
client.send("YES" )
gethash = client.recv(1024 )
print (" \n -----HASH OF PUBLIC KEY----- \n " +gethash)

if hex_digest == gethash:
# creating session key
key_128 = os .urandom(16 )
#encrypt CTR MODE session key
en = AES.new (key_128, AES.MODE_CTR, counter = lambda :key_128)
encrypto = en.encrypt(key_128)
#hashing sha1
en_object = hashlib.sha1(encrypto)
en_digest = en_object.hexdigest()

print ( " \n -----SESSION KEY---- \n " +en_digest)

#encrypting session key and public key

E = server_public_key.encrypt(encrypto, 16 )
print (" \n -----ENCRYPTED PUBLIC KEY AND SESSION KEY---- \n "
+str (E))
print (" \n -----HANDSHAKE COMPLETE-----" )
client.send(str (E))
while True :

#message from client

newmess = client.recv(1024 )
#decoding the message from HEXADECIMAL to decrypt the encrypted
version of the message only decoded = newmess.decode("hex" )
#making en_digest(session_key) as the key
key = en_digest[:16 ]
print (" \n ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FROM CLIENT -> " +newmess)
#decrypting message from the client
ideaDecrypt = IDEA.new (key, IDEA.MODE_CTR, counter= lambda :
key)
dMsg = ideaDecrypt.decrypt(decoded)
print (" \n **New Message** " +time .ctime(time .time ()) +" > "
+dMsg+" \n " ) mess = raw_input (" \n Message To Client -> " )
if mess != "" :

ideaEncrypt = IDEA.new (key, IDEA.MODE_CTR, counter= lambda :

key)
eMsg = ideaEncrypt.encrypt(mess)
eMsg = eMsg.encode("hex" ).upper()
if eMsg != "" :

print ( "ENCRYPTED MESSAGE TO CLIENT-> " + eMsg)

client.send(eMsg)
client.close()
else :
print ( " \n -----PUBLIC KEY HASH DOESNOT MATCH---- \n " )

Section 123.2: Client side Implementation

import time
import socket
import threading
import hashlib
import itertools
import sys
from Crypto import Random
from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA
from CryptoPlus.Cipher import IDEA

#animating loading
done = False
def animate():

for c in itertools .cycle([ '....' , '.......' , '..........' , '............' ]): if done:

break

sys .stdout.write(' \r CONFIRMING CONNECTION TO SERVER ' +c)

sys .stdout.flush()
time .sleep(0.1 )

#public key and private key

random_generator = Random.new ().read key = RSA.generate(1024 ,
random_generator) public = key.publickey().exportKey() private =
key.exportKey()

#hashing the public key

hash_object = hashlib.sha1(public) hex_digest = hash_object.hexdigest()

#Setting up socket
server = socket . socket ( socket .AF_INET , socket .SOCK_STREAM)

#host and port input user

host = raw_input ("Server Address To Be Connected -> " ) port = int
(input ("Port of The Server -> " ))
#binding the address and port
server.connect((host, port))
# printing "Server Started Message"
thread_load = threading .Thread(target= animate) thread_load.start()

time .sleep( 4 ) done = True

def send(t, name, key):

mess = raw_input (name + " : " )
key = key[:16 ]
#merging the message and the name
whole = name+" : " +mess
ideaEncrypt = IDEA.new (key, IDEA.MODE_CTR, counter= lambda :
key) eMsg = ideaEncrypt.encrypt(whole)
#converting the encrypted message to HEXADECIMAL to readable eMsg =
eMsg.encode("hex" ).upper()
if eMsg != "" :

print ( "ENCRYPTED MESSAGE TO SERVER-> " +eMsg)

server.send(eMsg)
def recv(t , key):
newmess = server.recv( 1024 )

print (" \n ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FROM SERVER-> " + newmess)

key = key[:16 ]
decoded = newmess.decode("hex" )
ideaDecrypt = IDEA.new (key, IDEA.MODE_CTR, counter= lambda :
key)
dMsg = ideaDecrypt.decrypt(decoded)
print (" \n **New Message From Server** " + time .ctime(time .time ()) +
" : " + dMsg + " \n " )

while True :
server.send(public)
confirm = server.recv(1024 ) if confirm == "YES" :

server.send(hex_digest)

#connected msg
msg = server.recv(1024 )
en = eval (msg)
decrypt = key.decrypt(en)
# hashing sha1
en_object = hashlib.sha1(decrypt) en_digest = en_object.hexdigest()

print (" \n -----ENCRYPTED PUBLIC KEY AND SESSION KEY FROM

SERVER-----" ) print (msg)
print (" \n -----DECRYPTED SESSION KEY-----" )
print (en_digest)
print (" \n -----HANDSHAKE COMPLETE---- \n " )
alais = raw_input (" \n Your Name -> " )

while True :
thread_send = threading .Thread(target = send , args = ( "------Sending
Message-----

" , alais, en_digest))

thread_recv = threading .Thread(target= recv, args= ("------Receiving
Message-----
" , en_digest))
thread_send.start()
thread_recv.start()

thread_send.join() thread_recv.join() time .sleep(0.5 )

time .sleep( 60 )
server.close()

Chapter 124: Python Networking

Section 124.1: Creating a Simple Http Server

To share files or to host simple websites(http and javascript) in your

local network, you can use Python's builtin SimpleHTTPServer module.
Python should be in your Path variable. Go to the folder where your files
are and type:
For python 2 :
$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer < portnumber >
For python 3 :
$ python3 -m http.server < portnumber >
If port number is not given 8000 is the default port. So the output will be:
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
You can access to your files through any device connected to the local
network by typing http://hostipaddress: 8000 /.
hostipaddress is your local IP address which probably starts with 192.168
.x.x. To finish the module simply press ctrl+c.

Section 124.2: Creating a TCP server

You can create a TCP server using the socketserver library. Here's a
simple echo server.
Server side
from sockerserver import BaseRequestHandler , TCPServer

class EchoHandler(BaseRequestHandler):
def handle(self ):
print ('connection from:' , self .client_address)
while True :

msg = self .request.recv( 8192 )

if not msg:
break
self .request.send(msg)

if __name__ == '__main__' :
server = TCPServer(('' , 5000 ), EchoHandler)
server.serve_forever()

Client side

from socket import socket , AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM sock = socket

(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
sock.connect(('localhost' , 5000 ))
sock.send(b'Monty Python' )
sock.recv(8192 ) # returns b'Monty Python'

socketserver makes it relatively easy to create simple TCP servers.

However, you should be aware that, by default, the servers are single
threaded and can only serve one client at a time. If you want to handle
multiple clients, either instantiate a ThreadingTCPServer instead.

from socketserver import ThreadingTCPServer

...
if __name__ == '__main__' :

server = ThreadingTCPServer(( '' , 5000 ) , EchoHandler)

server.serve_forever()

Section 124.3: Creating a UDP Server

A UDP server is easily created using the socketserver library.
a simple time server:
import time
from socketserver import BaseRequestHandler , UDPServer

class CtimeHandler(BaseRequestHandler):
def handle(self ):
print ('connection from: ' , self .client_address) # Get message and client
socket
msg, sock = self .request
resp = time .ctime()
sock.sendto(resp.encode('ascii' ), self .client_address)

if __name__ == '__main__' :
server = UDPServer(('' , 5000 ), CtimeHandler) server.serve_forever()

Testing:

>>> from socket import socket , AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM >>> sock =

socket (AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM)
>>> sick.sendto(b'' , ('localhost' , 5000 )) 0
>>> sock.recvfrom(8192 )
(b'Wed Aug 15 20:35:08 2012' , ('127.0.0.1' , 5000 ))

Section 124.4: Start Simple HttpServer in a thread and open

the browser
Useful if your program is outputting web pages along the way.
from http.server import HTTPServer, CGIHTTPRequestHandler
import webbrowser
import threading

def start_server(path, port= 8000 ):

'''Start a simple webserver serving path on port'''
os .chdir(path)
httpd = HTTPServer(('' , port), CGIHTTPRequestHandler)
httpd.serve_forever()

# Start the server in a new thread

port = 8000
daemon = threading .Thread(name= 'daemon_server' ,
target= start_server,
args= ('.' , port)

daemon.setDaemon( True ) # Set as a daemon so it will be killed once the

main thread is dead. daemon.start()
# Open the web browser
webbrowser . open ( 'http://localhost:{}' .format(port))

Section 124.5: The simplest Python socket client-server

example
Server side:
import socket

serversocket = socket .socket (socket .AF_INET, socket

.SOCK_STREAM)
serversocket.bind(('localhost' , 8089 ))
serversocket.listen(5 ) # become a server socket, maximum 5 connections

while True :
connection, address = serversocket.accept()
buf = connection.recv(64 )
if len (buf) > 0 :

print (buf)
break
Client Side:
import socket

clientsocket = socket .socket (socket .AF_INET, socket .SOCK_STREAM)

clientsocket.connect(('localhost' , 8089 ))
clientsocket.send('hello' )

First run the SocketServer.py, and make sure the server is ready to
listen/receive sth Then the client send info to the server; After the server
received sth, it terminates

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Chapter 125: Python HTTP Server
Section 125.1: Running a simple HTTP server

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 9000
Python 3.xVersion ≥ 3.0
python -m http.server 9000

Running this command serves the files of the current directory at port
9000 .
If no argument is provided as port number then server will run on
default port 8000 .
The -m flag will search sys .path for the corresponding .py file to run as a
module.
If you want to only serve on localhost you'll need to write a custom
Python program such as:

import sys
import BaseHTTPServer
from SimpleHTTPServer import SimpleHTTPRequestHandler

HandlerClass = SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
ServerClass = BaseHTTPServer .HTTPServer
Protocol = "HTTP/1.0"

if sys .argv[1 :]:

port = int (sys .argv[1 ])
else :
port = 8000
server_address = ('127.0.0.1' , port)

HandlerClass.protocol_version = Protocol
httpd = ServerClass(server_address , HandlerClass)

sa = httpd.socket .getsockname()
print "Serving HTTP on" , sa[0 ], "port" , sa[1 ], "..."
httpd.serve_forever()

Section 125.2: Serving files

Assuming you have the following directory of files:
 You can setup a web server to serve
these files as follows:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3
import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
PORT = 8000

handler = SimpleHTTPServer .SimpleHTTPRequestHandler httpd =

SocketServer .TCPServer(("localhost" , PORT), handler) print "Serving
files at port {}" .format(PORT)
httpd.serve_forever()

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

import http.server
import socketserver

PORT = 8000

handler = http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler httpd =

socketserver.TCPServer(("" , PORT), handler) print ("serving at port" ,
PORT)
httpd.serve_forever()

The SocketServer module provides the classes and functionalities to setup

a network server.
SocketServer 's TCPServer class sets up a server using the TCP protocol.
The constructor accepts a tuple representing the address of the server
(i.e. the IP address and port) and the class that handles the server
requests.
The SimpleHTTPRequestHandler class of the SimpleHTTPServer module
allows the files at the current directory to be served.
Save the script at the same directory and run it.
Run the HTTP Server :
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
python -m http.server 8000
The '-m' flag will search 'sys.path' for the corresponding '.py' file to run
as a module. Open localhost:8000 in the browser, it will give you the

following:

Section 125.3: Basic handling of GET, POST, PUT using

BaseHTTPRequestHandler
# from BaseHTTPServer import BaseHTTPRequestHandler, HTTPServer
# python2
from http.server import BaseHTTPRequestHandler , HTTPServer #
python3 class HandleRequests(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
def _set_headers( self ):

self .send_response(200 )
self .send_header('Content-type' , 'text/html' )
self .end_headers()

def do_GET(self ):
self ._set_headers()
self .wfile.write("received get request" )

def do_POST(self ):
'''Reads post request body'''
self ._set_headers()
content_len = int (self .headers.getheader('content-length' , 0 )) post_body
= self .rfile.read(content_len)
self .wfile.write("received post request:<br>{}" .format(post_body))

def do_PUT( self ): self .do_POST()

host = ''
port = 80
HTTPServer((host, port), HandleRequests).serve_forever()

Example output using curl:

$ curl http://localhost/
received get request%
$ curl -X POST http://localhost/
received post request: < br > %
$ curl -X PUT http://localhost/
received post request: < br > %
$ echo 'hello world' | curl --data-binary @ - http://localhost/ received post
request: < br > hello world

Section 125.4: Programmatic API of SimpleHTTPServer

What happens when we execute python -m SimpleHTTPServer 9000 ?

To answer this question we should understand the construct of

SimpleHTTPServer
(https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/SimpleHTTPServer.py) and
BaseHTTPServer(https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/BaseHTTPServer.py)
.

Firstly, Python invokes the SimpleHTTPServer module with 9000 as an

argument. Now observing the SimpleHTTPServer code,
def test (HandlerClass = SimpleHTTPRequestHandler ,
ServerClass = BaseHTTPServer .HTTPServer):
BaseHTTPServer . test (HandlerClass , ServerClass)
if __name__ == '__main__' : test ()
The test function is invoked following request handlers and ServerClass.
Now BaseHTTPServer.test is invoked
def test (HandlerClass = BaseHTTPRequestHandler , ServerClass =
HTTPServer , protocol = "HTTP/1.0" ): """Test the HTTP request handler
class.
This runs an HTTP server on port 8000 (or the first command line
argument).
"""

if sys .argv[1 :]:

port = int (sys .argv[1 ])
else :
port = 8000
server_address = ('' , port)

HandlerClass.protocol_version = protocol httpd =

ServerClass(server_address , HandlerClass)

sa = httpd.socket .getsockname()
print "Serving HTTP on" , sa[0 ], "port" , sa[1 ], "..." httpd.serve_forever()

Hence here the port number, which the user passed as argument is
parsed and is bound to the host address. Further basic steps of socket
programming with given port and protocol is carried out. Finally socket
server is initiated.

This is a basic overview of inheritance from SocketServer class to other

classes:

+------------+
| BaseServer |
+------------+
|
v
+-----------+ +------------------+
| TCPServer |------->| UnixStreamServer | +-----------+ +------------------+
|
v
+-----------+ +--------------------+ | UDPServer |------->|
UnixDatagramServer | +-----------+ +--------------------+

The links https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/BaseHTTPServer.py

and
https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/2.7/Lib/SocketServer.py are useful for
finding further information.

Chapter 126: Flask

Flask is a Python micro web framework used to run major websites
including Pinterest, Twilio, and LinkedIn. This topic explains and
demonstrates the variety of features Flask offers for both front and back
end web development.

Section 126.1: Files and Templates

Instead of typing our HTML markup into the return statements, we can
use the render_template() function:

from flask import Flask

from flask import render_template
app = Flask(__name__)

@ app.route( "/about" )
def about():
return render_template( "about-us.html" )
if __name__ == "__main__" :
app.run(host = "0.0.0.0" , port = 80 , debug = True )
This will use our template file about-us.html. To ensure our application
can find this file we must organize our directory in the following format:

- application.py
/templates
- about-us.html
- login-form.html
/static
/styles
- about-style.css
- login-style.css /scripts
- about-script.js
- login-script.js

Most importantly, references to these files in the HTML must look like
this:
<link rel = "stylesheet" type = "text/css" , href = "{{url_for('static',
filename='styles/aboutstyle.css')}}" >
which will direct the application to look for about-style.css in the styles
folder under the static folder. The same format of path applies to all
references to images, styles, scripts, or files.

Section 126.2: The basics

The following example is an example of a basic server:

# Imports the Flask class

from flask import Flask
# Creates an app and checks if it's the main or imported app =
Flask(__name__)

# Specifies what URL triggers hello_world()

@ app.route('/' )
# The function run on the index route
def hello_world():

# Returns the text to be displayed

return "Hello World!"

# If this script isn't an import if __name__ == "__main__" : # Run the app

until stopped
app.run()

Running this script (with all the right dependencies installed) should
start up a local server. The host is 127.0.0.1 commonly known as
localhost. This server by default runs on port 5000. To access your
webserver, open a web browser and enter the URL localhost:5000 or
127.0.0.1:5000 (no difference). Currently, only your computer can access
the webserver.

app.run() has three parameters, host, port, and debug. The host is by
default 127.0.0.1, but setting this to 0.0.0.0 will make your web server
accessible from any device on your network using your private IP
address in the URL. the port is by default 5000 but if the parameter is set
to port 80, users will not need to specify a port number as browsers use
port 80 by default. As for the debug option, during the development
process (never in production) it helps to set this parameter to True, as
your server will restart when changes made to your Flask project.

if __name__ == "__main__" :
app.run(host = "0.0.0.0" , port = 80 , debug = True )

Section 126.3: Routing URLs

With Flask, URL routing is traditionally done using decorators. These

decorators can be used for static routing, as well as routing URLs with
parameters. For the following example, imagine this Flask script is
running the website www.example.com.

@ app.route( "/" )
def index():
return "You went to www.example.com" @ app.route( "/about" )
def about():
return "You went to www.example.com/about" @ app.route(
"/users/guido-van-rossum" )
return "You went to www.example.com/guido-van-rossum"

With that last route, you can see that given a URL with /users/ and the
profile name, we could return a profile. Since it would be horribly
inefficient and messy to include a @ app.route() for every user, Flask
offers to take parameters from the URL:

@ app.route( "/users/<username>" )
def profile (username):
return "Welcome to the profile of " + username cities = [ "OMAHA" ,
"MELBOURNE" , "NEPAL" , "STUTTGART" , "LIMA" , "CAIRO" ,
"SHANGHAI" ]
@ app.route( "/stores/locations/<city>" )
def storefronts(city):
if city in cities:

return "Yes! We are located in " + city else :

return "No. We are not located in " + city

Section 126.4: HTTP Methods

The two most common HTTP methods are GET and POST. Flask can
run different code from the same URL dependent on the HTTP method
used. For example, in a web service with accounts, it is most convenient
to route the sign in page and the sign in process through the same URL.
A GET request, the same that is made when you open a URL in your
browser should show the login form, while a POST request (carrying
login data) should be processed separately. A route is also created to
handle the DELETE and PUT HTTP method.

@ app.route( "/login" , methods = [ "GET" ])

def login_form():
return "This is the login form"
@ app.route( "/login" , methods = [ "POST" ]) def login_auth():
return "Processing your data"
@ app.route( "/login" , methods = [ "DELETE" , "PUT" ]) def deny():
return "This method is not allowed" To simplify the code a bit, we can
import the request package from flask.
from flask import request
@ app.route( "/login" , methods = [ "GET" , "POST" , "DELETE" , "PUT"
def login():
if request.method == "DELETE" or request.method == "PUT" :

return "This method is not allowed"

elif request.method == "GET" :
return "This is the login forum"
elif request.method == "POST" :
return "Processing your data"

To retrieve data from the POST request, we must use the request
package:

from flask import request

@ app.route("/login" , methods= ["GET" , "POST" , "DELETE" , "PUT"
])
def login():

if request.method == "DELETE" or request.method == "PUT" :

return "This method is not allowed"
elif request.method == "GET" :
return "This is the login forum"
elif request.method == "POST" :
return "Username was " + request.form["username" ] + " and password
was " + request.form["password" ]

Section 126.5: Jinja Templating

Similar to Meteor.js, Flask integrates well with front end templating
services. Flask uses by default Jinja Templating. Templates allow small
snippets of code to be used in the HTML file such as conditionals or
loops.

When we render a template, any parameters beyond the template file

name are passed into the HTML templating service. The following route
will pass the username and joined date (from a function somewhere else)
into the HTML.

@ app.route("/users/<username>)
def profile(username):
joinedDate = get_joined_date(username) # This function's code is
irrelevant
awards = get_awards(username) # This function's code is irrelevant
# The joinDate is a string and awards is an array of strings
return render_template(" profile .html", username=username,
joinDate=joinDate, awards=awards)

When this template is rendered, it can use the variables passed to it from
the render_template() function. Here are the contents of profile .html:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
# if username

<title> Profile of {{ username }}</title> # else

<title>No User Found</title>
# endif
<head>
<body>
{% if username %}
<h1>{{ username }} joined on the date {{ date }}</h1>
{% if len(awards) > 0 %}
<h3>{{ username }} has the following awards:</h3> <ul>
{% for award in awards %}
<li>{{award}}</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
{% else %}
<h3>{{ username }} has no awards</h3>
{% endif %}
{% else %}
<h1>No user was found under that username</h1> {% endif %}
{# This is a comment and doesn't affect the output #} </body>
</html>

The following delimiters are used for different interpretations:

{% ... %} denotes a statement

{{ ... }} denotes an expression where a template is outputted {# ... #}
denotes a comment (not included in template output) {# ... ## implies the
rest of the line should be interpreted as a statement
Section 126.6: The Request Object

The request object provides information on the request that was made to
the route. To utilize this object, it must be imported from the flask
module:
from flask import request URL Parameters
In previous examples request.method and request.form were used,
however we can also use the request.args property to retrieve a
dictionary of the keys/values in the URL parameters.
@ app.route( "/api/users/<username>" ) def user_api(username):
try :
token = request.args.get( "key" ) if key == "pA55w0Rd" :

if isUser(username): # The code of this method is irrelevant joined =

joinDate(username) # The code of this method is irrelevant return "User "
+ username + " joined on " + joined

else :
return "User not found"
else :

return "Incorrect key"

# If there is no key parameter
except KeyError :

return "No key provided"

To correctly authenticate in this context, the following URL would be
needed (replacing the username with any username:
www.example.com/api/users/guido-van-rossum?key = pa55w0Rd
File Uploads
If a file upload was part of the submitted form in a POST request, the
files can be handled using the request object:

@ app.route("/upload" , methods= ["POST" ])

def upload_file():
f = request.files["wordlist-upload" ]
f.save("/var/www/uploads/" + f.filename) # Store with the original
filename
Cookies
The request may also include cookies in a dictionary similar to the URL
parameters.
@ app.route( "/home" ) def home():
try :
username = request.cookies.get( "username" ) return "Your stored
username is " + username except KeyError :
return "No username cookies was found" )

Chapter 127: Introduction to RabbitMQ using

AMQPStorm
Section 127.1: How to consume messages from RabbitMQ

Start with importing the library.

from amqpstorm import Connection

When consuming messages, we first need to define a function to handle

the incoming messages. This can be any callable function, and has to take
a message object, or a message tuple (depending on the to_tuple
parameter defined in start_consuming).

Besides processing the data from the incoming message, we will also have
to Acknowledge or Reject the message. This is important, as we need to
let RabbitMQ know that we properly received and processed the
message.
def on_message(message):
"""This function is called on message received.

:param message: Delivered message.

:return:
"""
print ("Message:" , message.body)

# Acknowledge that we handled the message without any issues.

message.ack()
# Reject the message.
# message.reject()
# Reject the message, and put it back in the queue.
# message.reject(requeue=True)
Next we need to set up the connection to the RabbitMQ server.
connection = Connection( '127.0.0.1' , 'guest' , 'guest' )
After that we need to set up a channel. Each connection can have
multiple channels, and in general when performing multi-threaded tasks,
it's recommended (but not required) to have one per thread.
channel = connection.channel()
Once we have our channel set up, we need to let RabbitMQ know that we
want to start consuming messages. In this case we will use our previously
defined on_message function to handle all our consumed messages.
The queue we will be listening to on the RabbitMQ server is going to be
simple_queue, and we are also telling RabbitMQ that we will be
acknowledging all incoming messages once we are done with them.
channel.basic.consume(callback = on_message , queue = 'simple_queue' ,
no_ack = False )
Finally we need to start the IO loop to start processing messages
delivered by the RabbitMQ server. channel.start_consuming(to_tuple =
False )

Section 127.2: How to publish messages to RabbitMQ

Start with importing the library.
from amqpstorm import Connection
from amqpstorm import Message
Next we need to open a connection to the RabbitMQ server.
connection = Connection( '127.0.0.1' , 'guest' , 'guest' )
After that we need to set up a channel. Each connection can have
multiple channels, and in general when performing multi-threaded tasks,
it's recommended (but not required) to have one per thread.
channel = connection.channel()
Once we have our channel set up, we can start to prepare our message.

# Message Properties.
properties = {
'content_type' : 'text/plain' ,
'headers' : {'key' : 'value' } }

# Create the message.

message = Message.create(channel = channel , body = 'Hello World!' ,
properties = properties)
Now we can publish the message by simply calling publish and providing
a routing_key. In this case we are going to send the message to a queue
called simple_queue.
message.publish(routing_key = 'simple_queue' )

Section 127.3: How to create a delayed queue in RabbitMQ

First we need to set up two basic channels, one for the main queue, and
one for the delay queue. In my example at the end, I include a couple of
additional flags that are not required, but makes the code more reliable;
such as confirm delivery, delivery_mode and durable. You can find more
information on these in the RabbitMQ manual .

After we have set up the channels we add a binding to the main channel
that we can use to send messages from the delay channel to our main
queue.
channel.queue.bind(exchange = 'amq.direct' , routing_key = 'hello' , queue
'hello' )
Next we need to configure our delay channel to forward messages to the
main queue once they have expired.

delay_channel.queue.declare(queue = 'hello_delay' , durable= True ,

arguments= { 'x-message-ttl' : 5000 ,
'x-dead-letter-exchange' : 'amq.direct' ,
'x-dead-letter-routing-key' : 'hello'

})
x-message-ttl (Message - Time To Live)

This is normally used to automatically remove old messages in the queue

after a specific duration, but by adding two optional arguments we can
change this behaviour, and instead have this parameter determine in
milliseconds how long messages will stay in the delay queue.
x-dead-letter-routing-key
This variable allows us to transfer the message to a different queue once
they have expired, instead of the default behaviour of removing it
completely.
x-dead-letter-exchange
This variable determines which Exchange used to transfer the message
from hello_delay to hello queue.
Publishing to the delay queue
When we are done setting up all the basic Pika parameters you simply
send a message to the delay queue using basic publish.

delay_channel.basic.publish(exchange = '' ,
routing_key= 'hello_delay' , body= 'test' ,
properties= {'delivery_mod' : 2 })

Once you have executed the script you should see the following queues
created in your RabbitMQ management module.

Example.
from amqpstorm import Connection
connection = Connection( '127.0.0.1' , 'guest' , 'guest' )

# Create normal 'Hello World' type channel.

channel = connection.channel()
channel.confirm_deliveries()
channel.queue.declare(queue= 'hello' , durable= True )

# We need to bind this channel to an exchange, that will be used to transfer

# messages from our delay queue.
channel.queue.bind(exchange= 'amq.direct' , routing_key= 'hello' , queue
'hello' )

# Create our delay channel.

delay_channel = connection.channel()
delay_channel.confirm_deliveries()
# This is where we declare the delay, and routing for our delay channel.
delay_channel.queue.declare(queue= 'hello_delay' , durable= True ,
arguments= {
'x-message-ttl' : 5000 , # Delay until the message is transferred in
milliseconds.
'x-dead-letter-exchange' : 'amq.direct' , # Exchange used to transfer the
message from A to B.
'x-dead-letter-routing-key' : 'hello' # Name of the queue we want the
message transferred to.

})

delay_channel.basic.publish(exchange = '' ,
routing_key= 'hello_delay' , body= 'test' ,
properties= {'delivery_mode' : 2 })

print ( "[x] Sent" )

Chapter 128: Descriptor

Section 128.1: Simple descriptor

There are two different types of descriptors. Data descriptors are defined
as objects that define both a __get__ () and a __set__ () method, whereas
non-data descriptors only define a __get__ () method. This distinction is
important when considering overrides and the namespace of an
instance's dictionary. If a data descriptor and an entry in an instance's
dictionary share the same name, the data descriptor will take
precedence. However, if instead a non-data descriptor and an entry in an
instance's dictionary share the same name, the instance dictionary's
entry will take precedence.

To make a read-only data descriptor, define both get() and set() with the
set() raising an AttributeError when called. Defining the set() method
with an exception raising placeholder is enough to make it a data
descriptor.
descr. __get__ (self , obj, type = None ) -> value
descr.__set__ (self , obj, value) -> None
descr.__delete__ (self , obj) -> None

An implemented example:

class DescPrinter(object ):
"""A data descriptor that logs activity.""" _val = 7

def __get__ (self , obj, objtype= None ): print ('Getting ...' )

return self ._val

def __set__ (self , obj, val): print ('Setting' , val) self ._val = val

def __delete__ (self , obj): print ('Deleting ...' ) del self ._val

class Foo():
x = DescPrinter()

i = Foo()
i.x
# Getting ... # 7

i.x = 100
# Setting 100 i.x
# Getting ... # 100

del i.x
# Deleting ... i.x
# Getting ... # 7

Section 128.2: Two-way conversions

Descriptor objects can allow related object attributes to react to changes
automatically.
Suppose we want to model an oscillator with a given frequency (in Hertz)
and period (in seconds). When we update the frequency we want the
period to update, and when we update the period we want the frequency
to update:

>>> oscillator = Oscillator(freq= 100.0 ) # Set frequency to 100.0 Hz

>>> oscillator.period # Period is 1 / frequency, i.e. 0.01 seconds
0.01
>>> oscillator.period = 0.02 # Set period to 0.02 seconds
>>> oscillator.freq # The frequency is automatically adjusted
50.0
>>> oscillator.freq = 200.0 # Set the frequency to 200.0 Hz
>>> oscillator.period # The period is automatically adjusted
0.005

We pick one of the values (frequency, in Hertz) as the "anchor," i.e. the
one that can be set with no conversion, and write a descriptor class for it:
class Hertz( object ):
def __get__ ( self , instance , owner): return self .value
def __set__ ( self , instance , value): self .value = float (value)
The "other" value (period, in seconds) is defined in terms of the anchor.
We write a descriptor class that does our conversions:

class Second(object ):
def __get__ (self , instance, owner):
# When reading period, convert from frequency return 1 / instance.freq

def __set__ (self , instance, value):

# When setting period, update the frequency instance.freq = 1 / float (value)

Now we can write the Oscillator class:

class Oscillator( object ):
period = Second() # Set the other value as a class attribute

def __init__ (self , freq):

self .freq = Hertz() # Set the anchor value as an instance attribute self .freq
= freq # Assign the passed value - self.period will be adjusted

Chapter 129: tempfile NamedTemporaryFile

param description
mode mode to open file, default=w+b
delete To delete file on closure, default=True
suffix filename suffix, default=''
prefix filename prefix, default='tmp'
dir dirname to place tempfile, default=None
buffsize default=-1, (operating system default used)

Section 129.1: Create (and write to a) known, persistent

temporary file

You can create temporary files which has a visible name on the file
system which can be accessed via the name property. The file can, on
unix systems, be configured to delete on closure (set by delete param,
default is True) or can be reopened later.

The following will create and open a named temporary file and write
'Hello World!' to that file. The filepath of the temporary file can be
accessed via name, in this example it is saved to the variable path and
printed for the user. The file is then re-opened after closing the file and
the contents of the tempfile are read and printed for the user.

import tempfile

with tempfile .NamedTemporaryFile(delete= False ) as t:

t.write('Hello World!' )
path = t.name
print path

with open (path) as t:

print t.read()
Output:
/tmp/tmp6pireJ Hello World !

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Chapter 130: Input, Subset and Output External
Data Files using Pandas
This section shows basic code for reading, sub-setting and writing
external data files using pandas.

Section 130.1: Basic Code to Import, Subset and Write

External Data Files Using Pandas

# Print the working directory

import os
print os .getcwd()
# C:\Python27\Scripts

# Set the working directory

os .chdir('C:/Users/general1/Documents/simple Python files' )
print os .getcwd()
# C:\Users\general1\Documents\simple Python files

# load pandas
import pandas as pd

# read a csv data file named 'small_dataset.csv' containing 4 lines and 3

variables my_data = pd.read_csv("small_dataset.csv" )
my_data
# x y z # 0 1 2 3 # 1 4 5 6 # 2 7 8 9 # 3 10 11 12

my_data.shape # (4, 3)
# number of rows and columns in data set
my_data.shape[ 0 ] # 4
# number of rows in data set
my_data.shape[ 1 ] # 3
# number of columns in data set

# Python uses 0-based indexing. The first row or column in a data set is
located # at position 0. In R the first row or column in a data set is located #
at position 1.

# Select the first two rows my_data[0 :2 ]

#xyz
#0 1 2 3
#1 4 5 6

# Select the second and third rows my_data[1 :3 ]

#xyz
#1456
#2789

# Select the third row my_data[2 :3 ]

#xyz
#2 7 8 9
# Select the first two elements of the first column my_data.iloc[0 :2 , 0 :1 ]
#x
#01
#14

# Select the first element of the variables y and z my_data.loc[0 , ['y' , 'z' ]]
#y2
#z3

# Select the first three elements of the variables y and z my_data.loc[0 :2 ,

['y' , 'z' ]]
#yz
#023
#156
#289

# Write the first three elements of the variables y and z # to an external file.
Here index = 0 means do not write row names.
my_data2 = my_data.loc[ 0 : 2 , [ 'y' , 'z' ]] my_data2.to_csv( 'my.output.csv'
index = 0 )

Chapter 131: Unzipping Files

To extract or uncompress a tarball, ZIP, or gzip file, Python's tarfile,
zipfile, and gzip modules are provided respectively. Python's tarfile
module provides the TarFile.extractall(path= "." , members= None )
function for extracting from a tarball file. Python's zipfile module
provides the ZipFile.extractall([path[, members[, pwd ]]]) function for
extracting or unzipping ZIP compressed files. Finally, Python's gzip
module provides the GzipFile class for decompressing.

Section 131.1: Using Python ZipFile.extractall() to decompress

a ZIP file

file_unzip = 'filename.zip'
unzip = zipfile .ZipFile(file_unzip, 'r' )
unzip.extractall()
unzip.close()

Section 131.2: Using Python TarFile.extractall() to decompress

a tarball

file_untar = 'filename.tar.gz'
untar = tarfile .TarFile(file_untar)
untar.extractall()
untar.close()

Chapter 132: Working with ZIP archives

Section 132.1: Examining Zipfile Contents

There are a few ways to inspect the contents of a zipfile. You can use the
printdir to just get a variety of information sent to stdout
with zipfile .ZipFile(filename) as zip :
zip .printdir()

# Out:
# File Name Modified Size # pyexpat.pyd 2016-06-25 22:13:34 157336 #
python.exe 2016-06-25 22:13:34 39576 # python3.dll 2016-06-25 22:13:34
51864 # python35.dll 2016-06-25 22:13:34 3127960 # etc.

We can also get a list of filenames with the namelist method. Here, we
simply print the list:
with zipfile .ZipFile(filename) as zip : print ( zip .namelist())
# Out: ['pyexpat.pyd', 'python.exe', 'python3.dll', 'python35.dll', ... etc. ...]
Instead of namelist, we can call the infolist method, which returns a list
of ZipInfo objects, which contain additional information about each file,
for instance a timestamp and file size:

with zipfile .ZipFile(filename) as zip : info = zip .infolist()

print (zip [0 ].filename)
print (zip [0 ].date_time)
print (info[0 ].file_size)

# Out: pyexpat.pyd
# Out: (2016, 6, 25, 22, 13, 34) # Out: 157336

Section 132.2: Opening Zip Files

To start, import the zipfile module, and set the filename.

import zipfile
filename = 'zipfile.zip'
Working with zip archives is very similar to working with files, you
create the object by opening the zipfile, which lets you work on it before
closing the file up again.
zip = zipfile .ZipFile(filename)
print (zip )
# <zipfile.ZipFile object at 0x0000000002E51A90> zip .close()

In Python 2.7 and in Python 3 versions higher than 3.2, we can use the
with context manager. We open the file in "read" mode, and then print a
list of filenames:

with zipfile .ZipFile(filename, 'r' ) as z: print (zip )

# <zipfile.ZipFile object at 0x0000000002E51A90>

Section 132.3: Extracting zip file contents to a directory

Extract all file contents of a zip file
import zipfile
with zipfile .ZipFile( 'zipfile.zip' , 'r' ) as zfile:
zfile.extractall( 'path' )
If you want extract single files use extract method, it takes name list and
path as input parameter

import zipfile
f= open ('zipfile.zip' , 'rb' ) zfile= zipfile .ZipFile(f) for cont in
zfile.namelist():

zfile.extract(cont , path)

Section 132.4: Creating new archives

To create new archive open zipfile with write mode.
import zipfile
new_arch = zipfile .ZipFile( "filename.zip" , mode = "w" )
To add files to this archive use write() method.

new_arch.write( 'filename.txt' , 'filename_in_archive.txt' ) #first parameter

is filename and second parameter is filename in archive by default
filename will be taken if not provided new_arch.close()

If you want to write string of bytes into the archive you can use writestr()
method.

str_bytes = "string buffer"

new_arch.writestr('filename_string_in_archive.txt' , str_bytes)
new_arch.close()

Chapter 133: Getting start with GZip

This module provides a simple interface to compress and decompress
files just like the GNU programs gzip and gunzip would.
The data compression is provided by the zlib module.

The gzip module provides the GzipFile class which is modeled after
Python ’s File Object. The GzipFile class reads and writes gzip-format
files, automatically compressing or decompressing the data so that it
looks like an ordinary file object.

Section 133.1: Read and write GNU zip files

import gzip
import os

outfilename = 'example.txt.gz'
output = gzip .open (outfilename, 'wb' )
try :

output.write( 'Contents of the example file go here. \n ' )

finally :
output.close()

print outfilename , 'contains' , os . stat (outfilename).st_size , 'bytes of

compressed data' os .system( 'file -b --mime %s' % outfilename)
Save it as 1gzip_write.py1.Run it through terminal.
$ python gzip_write.py
application/x gzip ; charset = binary
example.txt.gz contains 68 bytes of compressed data
Chapter 134: Stack
A stack is a container of objects that are inserted and removed according
to the last-in first-out (LIFO) principle. In the pushdown stacks only two
operations are allowed: push the item into the stack, and pop the item
out of the stack. A stack is a limited access data structure - elements can
be added and removed from the stack only at the top. Here is a
structural definition of a Stack: a stack is either empty or it consists of a
top and the rest which is a Stack.

Section 134.1: Creating a Stack class with a List Object

Using a list object you can create a fully functional generic Stack with
helper methods such as peeking and checking if the stack is Empty.
Check out the official python docs for using list as Stack here .
#define a stack class
class Stack :
def __init__(self) :
self. items = []
#method to check the stack is empty or not
def isEmpty(self) :
return self. items == []
#method for pushing an item
def push(self, item) :
self. items . append (item)
#method for popping an item
def pop(self) :
return self. items . pop ()
#check what item is on top of the stack without removing it
def peek(self) :
return self. items [-1]
#method to get the size
def size(self) :
return len(self. items )
#to view the entire stack
def fullStack(self) :
return self. items
An example run:

stack = Stack()
print ('Current stack:' , stack.fullStack())
print ('Stack empty?:' , stack.isEmpty())
print ('Pushing integer 1' )
stack.push(1 )
print ('Pushing string "Told you, I am generic stack!"' )
stack.push('Told you, I am generic stack!' )
print ('Pushing integer 3' )
stack.push(3 )
print ('Current stack:' , stack.fullStack())
print ('Popped item:' , stack.pop())
print ('Current stack:' , stack.fullStack())
print ('Stack empty?:' , stack.isEmpty())

Output:

Current stack: []
Stack empty?: True
Pushing integer 1
Pushing string "Told you, I am generic stack!" Pushing integer 3
Current stack: [1, 'Told you, I am generic stack!', 3] Popped item: 3
Current stack: [1, 'Told you, I am generic stack!'] Stack empty?: False

Section 134.2: Parsing Parentheses

Stacks are often used for parsing. A simple parsing task is to check
whether a string of parentheses are matching.

For example, the string ([]) is matching, because the outer and inner
brackets form pairs. ()<> ) is not matching, because the last ) has no
partner. ([)] is also not matching, because pairs must be either entirely
inside or outside other pairs.

def checkParenth(str ):
stack = Stack()
pushChars, popChars = "<({[" , ">)}]"
for c in str :

if c in pushChars:
stack.push(c)
elif c in popChars:
if stack.isEmpty():
return False
else :
stackTop = stack.pop()
# Checks to see whether the opening bracket matches the closing one
balancingBracket = pushChars[popChars.index(c)]
if stackTop != balancingBracket:
return False
else :
return False

return not stack.isEmpty()

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Chapter 135: Working around the Global
Interpreter Lock (GIL)
Section 135.1: Multiprocessing.Pool

The simple answer, when asking how to use threads in Python is: "Don't.
Use processes, instead." The multiprocessing module lets you create
processes with similar syntax to creating threads, but I prefer using their
convenient Pool object.

Using the code that David Beazley first used to show the dangers of
threads against the GIL , we'll rewrite it using multiprocessing.Pool :
David Beazley's code that showed GIL threading problems

from threading import Thread

import time
def countdown(n):

while n > 0 :
n=1
COUNT = 10000000

t1 = Thread(target= countdown, args= (COUNT/2 , ))

t2 = Thread(target= countdown, args= (COUNT/2 , ))
start = time .time ()
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()
end = time .time ()
print end-start

Re-written using multiprocessing.Pool:

import multiprocessing
import time
def countdown(n):

while n > 0 :
n=1
COUNT = 10000000
start = time . time ()
with multiprocessing.Pool as pool:
pool. map (countdown , [COUNT/ 2 , COUNT/ 2 ])
pool.close()
pool.join()
end = time . time ()
print (end-start)

Instead of creating threads, this creates new processes. Since each

process is its own interpreter, there are no GIL collisions.
multiprocessing.Pool will open as many processes as there are cores on
the machine, though in the example above, it would only need two. In a
real-world scenario, you want to design your list to have at least as much
length as there are processors on your machine. The Pool will run the
function you tell it to run with each argument, up to the number of
processes it creates. When the function finishes, any remaining functions
in the list will be run on that process.

I've found that, even using the with statement, if you don't close and join
the pool, the processes continue to exist. To clean up resources, I always
close and join my pools.

Section 135.2: Cython nogil:

Cython is an alternative python interpreter. It uses the GIL, but lets you
disable it. See their documentation
As an example, using the code that David Beazley first used to show the
dangers of threads against the GIL , we'll rewrite it using nogil:
David Beazley's code that showed GIL threading problems

from threading import Thread

import time
def countdown(n):

while n > 0 :
n=1
COUNT = 10000000

t1 = Thread(target= countdown, args= (COUNT/2 , ))

t2 = Thread(target= countdown, args= (COUNT/2 , ))
start = time .time ()
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()
end = time .time ()
print end-start

Re-written using nogil (ONLY WORKS IN CYTHON):

from threading import Thread

import time
def countdown(n):

while n > 0 :
n=1
COUNT = 10000000

with nogil:
t1 = Thread(target= countdown, args= (COUNT/2 , )) t2 =
Thread(target= countdown, args= (COUNT/2 , )) start = time .time ()
t1.start(); t2.start()
t1.join(); t2.join()

end = time . time () print end-start

It's that simple, as long as you're using cython. Note that the
documentation says you must make sure not to change any python
objects:

Code in the body of the statement must not manipulate Python objects in
any way, and must not call anything that manipulates Python objects
without first re-acquiring the GIL. Cython currently does not check this.

Chapter 136: Deployment

Section 136.1: Uploading a Conda Package

Before starting you must have:

Anaconda installed on your system Account on Binstar If you are not
using Anaconda 1.6+ install the binstar command line client:
$ conda install binstar
$ conda update binstar
If you are not using Anaconda the Binstar is also available on pypi:
$ pip install binstar
Now we can login:
$ binstar login
Test your login with the whoami command:
$ binstar whoami
We are going to be uploading a package with a simple ‘hello world’
function. To follow along start by getting my demonstration package
repo from Github:
$ git clone https://github.com/ < NAME > / < Package >
This a small directory that looks like this:

package/
setup.py
test_package/

__init__ .py hello.py

bld.bat
build.sh
meta.yaml

Setup.py is the standard python build file and hello.py has our single
hello_world() function.
The bld.bat, build.sh, and meta.yaml are scripts and metadata for the
Conda package. You can read the Conda build page for more info on
those three files and their purpose.
Now we create the package by running:
$ conda build test_package/
That is all it takes to create a Conda package.
The final step is uploading to binstar by copying and pasting the last line
of the print out after running the conda build test_package/ command.
On my system the command is:
$ binstar upload /home/xavier/anaconda/conda-bld/linux 64
/test_package-0.1.0-py27_0.tar. bz2
Since it is your first time creating a package and release you will be
prompted to fill out some text fields which could alternatively be done
through the web app.
You will see a done printed out to confirm you have successfully uploaded
your Conda package to Binstar.

Chapter 137: Logging

Section 137.1: Introduction to Python Logging

This module defines functions and classes which implement a flexible

event logging system for applications and libraries.

The key benefit of having the logging API provided by a standard

library module is that all Python modules can participate in logging, so
your application log can include your own messages integrated with
messages from thirdparty modules.

So, let's start:

Example Configuration Directly in Code
import logging

logger = logging .getLogger()

handler = logging .StreamHandler()
formatter = logging .Formatter(

'%(asctime)s %(name)-12s %(levelname)-8s %(message)s' )

handler.setFormatter(formatter )
logger.addHandler(handler)
logger.setLevel(logging .DEBUG)

logger.debug( 'this is a %s test' , 'debug' )

Output example:
2016-07-26 18:53:55,332 root DEBUG this is a debug test
Example Configuration via an INI File
Assuming the file is named logging_config.ini. More details for the file
format are in the logging configuration section of the logging tutorial .
[loggers] keys=root
[handlers]
keys=stream_handler
[formatters] keys=formatter

[logger_root]
level=DEBUG
handlers=stream_handler

[handler_stream_handler] class=StreamHandler
level=DEBUG
formatter=formatter
args=(sys.stderr,)

[formatter_formatter] format=%(asctime)s %(name)-12s %

(levelname)-8s %(message)s
Then use logging .config.fileConfig() in the code:
import logging
from logging .config import fileConfig

fileConfig( 'logging_config.ini' )
logger = logging .getLogger()
logger.debug('often makes a very good meal of %s' , 'visiting tourists' )

Example Configuration via a Dictionary

As of Python 2.7, you can use a dictionary with configuration details. PEP
391 contains a list of the mandatory and optional elements in the
configuration dictionary.
import logging
from logging .config import dictConfig

logging_config = dict (
version = 1 ,
formatters = {

'f' : {'format' :
'%(asctime)s %(name)-12s %(levelname)-8s %(message)s' }
},
handlers = {
'h' : {'class' : 'logging.StreamHandler' ,
'formatter' : 'f' ,
'level' : logging .DEBUG}
},
root = {
'handlers' : ['h' ],
'level' : logging .DEBUG,
},
)

dictConfig(logging_config)
logger = logging .getLogger()
logger.debug( 'often makes a very good meal of %s' , 'visiting tourists' )

Section 137.2: Logging exceptions

If you want to log exceptions you can and should make use of the logging
.exception(msg) method:

>>> import logging

>>> logging .basicConfig()
>>> try :
... raise Exception ('foo' )
... except :
... logging .exception('bar' )
...
ERROR:root:bar
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 2 , in < module >

Exception : foo
Do not pass the exception as argument:
As logging .exception(msg) expects a msg arg, it is a common pitfall to
pass the exception into the logging call like this:

>>> try :
... raise Exception ('foo' ) ... except Exception as e:
... logging .exception(e)
...
ERROR:root:foo
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 2 , in < module > Exception : foo

While it might look as if this is the right thing to do at first, it is actually
problematic due to the reason how exceptions and various encoding
work together in the logging module:

>>> try :
... raise Exception (u'föö' )
... except Exception as e:
... logging .exception(e)
...
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/.../python2.7/logging/__init__.py" , line 861 , in emit

msg = self .format(record)
File "/.../python2.7/logging/__init__.py" , line 734 , in format
return fmt.format(record)
File "/.../python2.7/logging/__init__.py" , line 469 , in format
s = self ._fmt % record.__dict__
UnicodeEncodeError : 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 1-
2: ordinal not in range(128)
Logged from file <stdin>, line 4

Trying to log an exception that contains unicode chars, this way will fail
miserably . It will hide the stacktrace of the original exception by
overriding it with a new one that is raised during formatting of your
logging .exception(e) call.

Obviously, in your own code, you might be aware of the encoding in

exceptions. However, 3rd party libs might handle this in a different way.
Correct Usage:
If instead of the exception you just pass a message and let python do its
magic, it will work:
>>> try :
... raise Exception (u'föö' ) ... except Exception as e:
... logging .exception('bar' ) ...
ERROR:root:bar
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 2 , in < module > Exception : f\xf6\xf6

As you can see we don't actually use e in that case, the call to logging
.exception(...) magically formats the most recent exception.
Logging exceptions with non ERROR log levels
If you want to log an exception with another log level than ERROR, you
can use the exc_info argument of the default loggers:

logging .debug('exception occurred' , exc_info= 1 ) logging .info('exception

occurred' , exc_info= 1 ) logging .warning('exception occurred' , exc_info=
1)

Accessing the exception's message

Be aware that libraries out there might throw exceptions with messages
as any of unicode or (utf-8 if you're lucky) byte-strings. If you really
need to access an exception's text, the only reliable way, that will always
work, is to use repr (e) or the %r string formatting:

>>> try :
... raise Exception (u'föö' )
... except Exception as e:
... logging .exception('received this exception: %r' % e) ...
ERROR:root:received this exception: Exception (u'f \x f6 \x f6' , )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 2 , in < module >

Exception : f\xf6\xf6

Chapter 138: Web Server Gateway Interface

(WSGI)
Parameter Details
start_response A function used to process the start

Section 138.1: Server Object (Method)

Our server object is given an 'application' parameter which can be any

callable application object (see other examples). It writes first the
headers, then the body of data returned by our application to the system
standard output.

import os , sys

def run(application):
environ['wsgi.input' ] = sys .stdin
environ['wsgi.errors' ] = sys .stderr

headers_set = []
headers_sent = []

def write (data):

"""
Writes header data from 'start_response()' as well as body data from
'response' to system standard output.
"""
if not headers_set:

raise AssertionError ( "write() before start_response()" )

elif not headers_sent:

status, response_headers = headers_sent[:] = headers_set
sys .stdout.write('Status: %s \r\n ' % status)
for header in response_headers:

sys .stdout.write( '%s: %s \r\n ' % header)

sys .stdout.write( ' \r\n ' )
sys .stdout.write(data)
sys .stdout.flush()
def start_response(status, response_headers):
""" Sets headers for the response returned by this server."""
if headers_set:

raise AssertionError ( "Headers already set!" )

headers_set[:] = [status , response_headers]
return write

# This is the most important piece of the 'server object'

# Our result will be generated by the 'application' given to this method as a
parameter result = application(environ, start_response)
try :

for data in result:

if data:
write(data) # Body isn't empty send its data to 'write()' if not headers_sent:
write( '' ) # Body is empty, send empty string to 'write()'

Chapter 139: Python Server Sent Events

Server Sent Events (SSE) is a unidirectional connection between a server
and a client (usually a web browser) that allows the server to "push"
information to the client. It is much like websockets and long polling.
The main difference between SSE and websockets is that SSE is
unidirectional, only the server can send info to the client, where as with
websockets, both can send info to each other. SSE is typically considered
to be much simpler to use/implement than websockets.

Section 139.1: Flask SSE

@ route( "/stream" )
def stream():
def event_stream():

while True :
if message_to_send:
yield "data:
{} \n\n " .format(message_to_send) "
return Response(event_stream(), mimetype=" text/event-stream ")

Section 139.2: Asyncio SSE

This example uses the asyncio SSE library:
https://github.com/brutasse/asyncio-sse
import asyncio
import sse

class Handler(sse.Handler):
@ asyncio.coroutine
def handle_request(self ):

yield from asyncio.sleep(2 )

self .send('foo' )
yield from asyncio.sleep(2 )
self .send('bar' , event= 'wakeup' )

start_server = sse.serve(Handler, 'localhost' , 8888 )

asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(start_server)
asyncio.get_event_loop().run_forever()

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Chapter 140: Alternatives to switch statement from
other languages
Section 140.1: Use what the language o☐ers: the if/else
construct

Well, if you want a switch/case construct, the most straightforward way

to go is to use the good old if/ else construct:
def switch(value):
if value == 1 :
return "one"

if value == 2 :
return "two"
if value == 42 :
return "the answer to the question about life, the universe and
everything"
raise Exception ("No case found!" )

it might look redundant, and not always pretty, but that's by far the
most efficient way to go, and it does the job:

>>> switch(1 )
one
>>> switch(2 )
two
>>> switch(3 )
…
Exception : No case found!
>>> switch(42 )
the answer to the question about life the universe and everything

Section 140.2: Use a dict of functions

Another straightforward way to go is to create a dictionary of functions:

switch = {
1 : lambda : 'one' ,
2 : lambda : 'two' ,
42 : lambda : 'the answer of life the universe and everything' , }
then you add a default function:
def default_case():
raise Exception ( 'No case found!' )
and you use the dictionary's get method to get the function given the
value to check and run it. If value does not exists in dictionary, then
default_case is run.

>>> switch.get(1 , default_case)() one

>>> switch.get(2 , default_case)() two
>>> switch.get(3 , default_case)() …
Exception : No case found!
>>> switch.get(42 , default_case)()
the answer of life the universe and everything

you can also make some syntactic sugar so the switch looks nicer:
def run_switch(value):
return switch.get(value , default_case)()
>>> run_switch( 1 ) one

Section 140.3: Use class introspection

You can use a class to mimic the switch/case structure. The following is
using introspection of a class (using the getattr () function that resolves a
string into a bound method on an instance) to resolve the "case" part.
Then that introspecting method is aliased to the __call__ method to
overload the () operator.

class SwitchBase:
def switch(self , case):
m = getattr (self , 'case_{}' .format(case), None ) if not m:

return self .default

return m
__call__ = switch
Then to make it look nicer, we subclass the SwitchBase class (but it could
be done in one class), and there we define all the case as methods:

class CustomSwitcher: def case_1(self ): return 'one'

def case_2( self ): return 'two'
def case_42( self ):
return 'the answer of life, the universe and everything!'
def default( self ):
raise Exception ( 'Not a case!' )
so then we can finally use it:

>>> switch = CustomSwitcher()

>>> print (switch(1 ))
one
>>> print (switch(2 ))
two
>>> print (switch(3 ))
…
Exception : Not a case!
>>> print (switch(42 ))
the answer of life, the universe and everything!

Section 140.4: Using a context manager

Another way, which is very readable and elegant, but far less efficient
than an if/else structure, is to build a class such as follows, that will read
and store the value to compare with, expose itself within the context as a
callable that will return true if it matches the stored value:

class Switch:
def __init__ ( self , value):
self ._val = value

def __enter__(self ):
return self
def __exit__(self , type , value, traceback ): return False # Allows traceback
to occur
def __call__ (self , cond, *mconds): return self ._val in (cond, )+mconds

then defining the cases is almost a match to the real switch/case construct
(exposed within a function below, to make it easier to show off):
def run_switch(value):
with Switch(value) as case:
if case( 1 ):

return 'one'
if case(2 ):
return 'two'
if case(3 ):
return 'the answer to the question about life, the universe and everything'
# default
raise Exception ('Not a case!' )

So the execution would be:

>>> run_switch(1 )
one
>>> run_switch(2 )
two
>>> run_switch(3 )
…
Exception : Not a case!
>>> run_switch(42 )
the answer to the question about life, the universe and everything

Nota Bene : This solution is being offered as the switch module available on
pypi .

Chapter 141: List destructuring (aka packing and

unpacking)
Section 141.1: Destructuring assignment

In assignments, you can split an Iterable into values using the

"unpacking" syntax:
Destructuring as values

a , b = (1 , 2 )
print (a)
# Prints: 1
print (b)
# Prints: 2

If you try to unpack more than the length of the iterable, you'll get an
error:
a,b,c=[1]
# Raises: ValueError: not enough values to unpack (expected 3, got 1)
Python 3.x Version > 3.0
Destructuring as a list
You can unpack a list of unknown length using the following syntax:
head , *tail = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
Here, we extract the first value as a scalar, and the other values as a list:

print (head)
# Prints: 1
print (tail)
# Prints: [2, 3, 4, 5]

Which is equivalent to:

l = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] head = l[0 ]
tail = l[1 :]

It also works with multiple elements or elements form the end of the list:

a , b, *other, z = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] print (a, b, z, other)

# Prints: 1 2 5 [3, 4]

Ignoring values in destructuring assignments

If you're only interested in a given value, you can use _ to indicate you
aren’t interested. Note: this will still set _, just most people don’t use it as
a variable.

a , _ = [1 , 2 ]
print (a)
# Prints: 1
a, _, c = (1 , 2 , 3 ) print (a)
# Prints: 1

print (c)
# Prints: 3
Python 3.x Version > 3.0
Ignoring lists in destructuring assignments
Finally, you can ignore many values using the *_ syntax in the
assignment:

a , *_ = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] print (a)
# Prints: 1

which is not really interesting, as you could using indexing on the list
instead. Where it gets nice is to keep first and last values in one
assignment:

a , *_, b = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] print (a, b)

# Prints: 1 5

or extract several values at once:

a , _, b, _, c, *_ = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ] print (a, b, c)
# Prints: 1 3 5

Section 141.2: Packing function arguments

In functions, you can define a number of mandatory arguments:

def fun1(arg1 , arg2 , arg3):
return (arg1 , arg2 , arg3)
which will make the function callable only when the three arguments are
given:
fun1( 1 , 2 , 3 )
and you can define the arguments as optional, by using default values:
def fun2(arg1 = 'a' , arg2 = 'b' , arg3 = 'c' ): return (arg1 , arg2 , arg3)
so you can call the function in many different ways, like:

fun2( 1 ) → (1 , b, c) fun2(1 , 2 ) → (1 , 2 , c) fun2(arg2= 2 , arg3= 3 ) → (a

...

But you can also use the destructuring syntax to pack arguments up, so
you can assign variables using a list or a dict .
Packing a list of arguments
Consider you have a list of values
l=[1,2,3]
You can call the function with the list of values as an argument using the
* syntax:

fun1(*l)
# Returns: (1,2,3)
fun1(*['w' , 't' , 'f' ]) # Returns: ('w','t','f')

But if you do not provide a list which length matches the number of
arguments:
fun1(*[ 'oops' ])
# Raises: TypeError: fun1() missing 2 required positional arguments:
'arg2' and 'arg3'
Packing keyword arguments
Now, you can also pack arguments using a dictionary. You can use the **
operator to tell Python to unpack the dict as parameter values:

d={
'arg1' : 1 ,
'arg2' : 2 ,
'arg3' : 3

}
fun1(**d)
# Returns: (1, 2, 3)

when the function only has positional arguments (the ones without
default values) you need the dictionary to be contain of all the expected
parameters, and have no extra parameter, or you'll get an error:

fun1(**{ 'arg1' :1 , 'arg2' :2 })

# Raises: TypeError: fun1() missing 1 required positional argument: 'arg3'
fun1(**{'arg1' :1 , 'arg2' :2 , 'arg3' :3 , 'arg4' :4 })
# Raises: TypeError: fun1() got an unexpected keyword argument 'arg4'

For functions that have optional arguments, you can pack the arguments
as a dictionary the same way:
fun2(**d)
# Returns: (1, 2, 3)
But there you can omit values, as they will be replaced with the defaults:
fun2(**{ 'arg2' : 2 }) # Returns: ('a', 2, 'c')
And the same as before, you cannot give extra values that are not
existing parameters:
fun2(**{ 'arg1' : 1 , 'arg2' : 2 , 'arg3' : 3 , 'arg4' : 4 })
# Raises: TypeError: fun2() got an unexpected keyword argument 'arg4'
In real world usage, functions can have both positional and optional
arguments, and it works the same:
def fun3(arg1 , arg2 = 'b' , arg3 = 'c' ) return (arg1 , arg2 , arg3)
you can call the function with just an iterable:

fun3(*[ 1 ])
# Returns: (1, 'b', 'c') fun3(*[1 , 2 , 3 ])
# Returns: (1, 2, 3)

or with just a dictionary:

fun3(**{ 'arg1' :1 })
# Returns: (1, 'b', 'c')
fun3(**{'arg1' :1 , 'arg2' :2 , 'arg3' :3 }) # Returns: (1, 2, 3)

or you can use both in the same call:

fun3(*[ 1 , 2 ] , **{ 'arg3' : 3 }) # Returns: (1,2,3)
Beware though that you cannot provide multiple values for the same
argument:
fun3(*[ 1 , 2 ] , **{ 'arg2' : 42 , 'arg3' : 3 })
# Raises: TypeError: fun3() got multiple values for argument 'arg2'

Section 141.3: Unpacking function arguments

When you want to create a function that can accept any number of
arguments, and not enforce the position or the name of the argument at
"compile" time, it's possible and here's how:
def fun1(*args , **kwargs):
print (args , kwargs)
The *args and **kwargs parameters are special parameters that are set
to a tuple and a dict , respectively:

fun1( 1 , 2 , 3 )
# Prints: (1, 2, 3) {}
fun1(a= 1 , b= 2 , c= 3 )
# Prints: () {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3}
fun1('x' , 'y' , 'z' , a= 1 , b= 2 , c= 3 )
# Prints: ('x', 'y', 'z') {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3}

If you look at enough Python code, you'll quickly discover that it is

widely being used when passing arguments over to another function. For
example if you want to extend the string class:

class MyString(str ):
def __init__ (self , *args, **kwarg):
print ('Constructing MyString' )
super (MyString, self ).__init__ (*args, **kwarg)

Chapter 142: Accessing Python source code and

bytecode
Section 142.1: Display the bytecode of a function

The Python interpreter compiles code to bytecode before executing it on

the Python's virtual machine (see also What is python bytecode?.
Here's how to view the bytecode of a Python function
import dis

def fib(n):
if n <= 2 : return 1
return fib(n1 ) + fib(n2 )
# Display the disassembled bytecode of the function.
dis . dis (fib)
The function dis . dis in the dis module will return a decompiled bytecode
of the function passed to it.

Section 142.2: Display the source code of an object

Objects that are not built-in
To print the source code of a Python object use inspect . Note that this
won't work for built-in objects nor for objects defined interactively. For
these you will need other methods explained later.
Here's how to print the source code of the method randint from the
random module:
import random
import inspect

print (inspect .getsource(random .randint))

# Output:
# def randint(self, a, b):
# """Return random integer in range [a, b], including both end points.
# """
#
# return self.randrange(a, b+1)

To just print the documentation string

print (inspect .getdoc(random .randint))

# Output:
# Return random integer in range [a, b], including both end points.

Print full path of the file where the method random .randint is defined:

print (inspect .getfile(random .randint))

# c:\Python35\lib\random.py
print (random .randint.__code__.co_filename) # equivalent to the above #
c:\Python35\lib\random.py

Objects defined interactively

If an object is defined interactively inspect cannot provide the source code
but you can use dill.source.getsource instead
# define a new function in the interactive shell def add(a , b):
return a + b
print (add.__code__.co_filename) # Output: <stdin>

import dill
print dill.source.getsource(add) # def add(a, b):

return a + b
Built-in objects
The source code for Python's built-in functions is written in c and can
only be accessed by looking at the Python's source code (hosted on
Mercurial or downloadable from
https://www.python.org/downloads/source/) .
print ( inspect .getsource( sorted )) # raises a TypeError type ( sorted ) # <class
'builtin_function_or_method'>

Section 142.3: Exploring the code object of a function

CPython allows access to the code object for a function object.
The __code__object contains the raw bytecode (co_code) of the function
as well as other information such as constants and variable names.

def fib(n):
if n <= 2 : return 1
return fib(n1 ) + fib(n2 )

dir (fib.__code__)

def fib(n):
if n <= 2 : return 1
return fib(n1 ) + fib(n2 )

dir (fib.__code__)

Chapter 143: Mixins

Section 143.1: Mixin

A Mixin is a set of properties and methods that can be used in different

classes, which don't come from a base class. In Object Oriented
Programming languages, you typically use inheritance to give objects of
different classes the same functionality; if a set of objects have some
ability, you put that ability in a base class that both objects inherit from.

For instance, say you have the classes Car, Boat, and Plane. Objects
from all of these classes have the ability to travel, so they get the function
travel. In this scenario, they all travel the same basic way, too; by getting
a route, and moving along it. To implement this function, you could
derive all of the classes from Vehicle, and put the function in that shared
class:

class Vehicle( object ):

"""A generic vehicle class."""
def __init__ ( self , position): self .position = position

def travel(self , destination):

route = calculate_route(from = self .position, to= destination) self
.move_along(route)

class Car(Vehicle): ...

class Boat(Vehicle): ...
class Plane(Vehicle): ...
With this code, you can call travel on a car (car.travel( "Montana" )),
boat (boat.travel( "Hawaii" )), and plane (plane.travel( "France" ))

However, what if you have functionality that's not available to a base

class? Say, for instance, you want to give Car a radio and the ability to
use it to play a song on a radio station, with play_song_on_station, but
you also have a Clock that can use a radio too. Car and Clock could
share a base class (Machine). However, not all machines can play songs;
Boat and Plane can't (at least in this example). So how do you
accomplish without duplicating code? You can use a mixin. In Python,
giving a class a mixin is as simple as adding it to the list of subclasses,
like this
class Foo(main_super , mixin): ...
Foo will inherit all of the properties and methods of main_super, but also
those of mixin as well.
So, to give the classes Car and clock the ability to use a radio, you could
override Car from the last example and write this:
class RadioUserMixin( object ): def __init__ ( self ):
self .radio = Radio()

def play_song_on_station(self , station): self .radio.set_station(station) self

.radio.play_song()

class Car(Vehicle , RadioUserMixin): ...

class Clock(Vehicle , RadioUserMixin): ...
Now you can call car.play_song_on_station( 98.7 ) and
clock.play_song_on_station( 101.3 ), but not something like
boat.play_song_on_station( 100.5 )

The important thing with mixins is that they allow you to add
functionality to much different objects, that don't share a "main"
subclass with this functionality but still share the code for it nonetheless.
Without mixins, doing something like the above example would be much
harder, and/or might require some repetition.

Section 143.2: Overriding Methods in Mixins

Mixins are a sort of class that is used to "mix in" extra properties and
methods into a class. This is usually fine because many times the mixin
classes don't override each other's, or the base class' methods. But if you
do override methods or properties in your mixins this can lead to
unexpected results because in Python the class hierarchy is defined right
to left.

For instance, take the following classes

class Mixin1( object ): def test ( self ): print "Mixin1" class Mixin2( object
test ( self ): print "Mixin2" class BaseClass( object ): def test ( self ):
print "Base" class MyClass(BaseClass , Mixin1 , Mixin2): pass
In this case the Mixin2 class is the base class, extended by Mixin1 and
finally by BaseClass. Thus, if we execute the following code snippet:

>>> x = MyClass() >>> x.test ()

Base

We see the result returned is from the Base class. This can lead to
unexpected errors in the logic of your code and needs to be accounted for
and kept in mind

Chapter 144: Attribute Access

Section 144.1: Basic Attribute Access using the Dot Notation

Let's take a sample class.

class Book:
def __init__ (self , title, author):
self .title = title
self .author = author

book1 = Book(title = "Right Ho, Jeeves" , author = "P.G. Wodehouse" )

In Python you can access the attribute title of the class using the dot
notation.
>>> book1.title
'P.G. Wodehouse'
If an attribute doesn't exist, Python throws an error:

>>> book1.series
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
AttributeError : 'Book' object has no attribute 'series'

Section 144.2: Setters, Getters & Properties

For the sake of data encapsulation, sometimes you want to have an

attribute which value comes from other attributes or, in general, which
value shall be computed at the moment. The standard way to deal with
this situation is to create a method, called getter or a setter.

class Book:
def __init__ (self , title, author):
self .title = title
self .author = author

In the example above, it's easy to see what happens if we create a new
Book that contains a title and a author. If all books we're to add to our
Library have authors and titles, then we can skip the getters and setters
and use the dot notation. However, suppose we have some books that do
not have an author and we want to set the author to "Unknown". Or if
they have multiple authors and we plan to return a list of authors.

In this case we can create a getter and a setter for the author attribute.

class P:
def __init__ (self , title, author): self .title = title
self .setAuthor(author)

def get_author( self ): return self .author

def set_author( self , author): if not author:
self .author = "Unknown" else :
self .author = author
This scheme is not recommended.
One reason is that there is a catch: Let's assume we have designed our
class with the public attribute and no methods. People have already used
it a lot and they have written code like this:
>>> book = Book(title = "Ancient Manuscript" , author = "Some Guy" ) >>>
book.author = "" #Cos Some Guy didn't write this one!

Now we have a problem. Because author is not an attribute! Python

offers a solution to this problem called properties. A method to get
properties is decorated with the @property before it's header. The
method that we want to function as a setter is decorated with
@attributeName.setter before it.

Keeping this in mind, we now have our new updated class.

class Book:
def __init__ (self , title, author): self .title = title
self .author = author

@ property
def author( self ):
return self .__author @ author.setter
def author( self , author):
if not author:

self .author = "Unknown" else :

self .author = author

Note, normally Python doesn't allow you to have multiple methods with
the same name and different number of parameters. However, in this
case Python allows this because of the decorators used.
If we test the code:

>>> book = Book(title= "Ancient Manuscript" , author= "Some Guy" )

>>> book.author = "" #Cos Some Guy didn't write this one! >>>
book.author
Unknown

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Chapter 145: ArcPy
Section 145.1: createDissolvedGDB to create a file gdb on the
workspace
def createDissolvedGDB(workspace , gdbName):
gdb_name = workspace + "/" + gdbName + ".gdb"

if (arcpy.Exists(gdb_name):
arcpy.Delete_management(gdb_name)
arcpy.CreateFileGDB_management(workspace, gdbName, "" )

else :
arcpy.CreateFileGDB_management(workspace , gdbName , "" )
return gdb_name

Section 145.2: Printing one field's value for all rows of feature
class in file geodatabase using Search Cursor
To print a test field (TestField) from a test feature class (TestFC) in a test
file geodatabase (Test.gdb) located in a temporary folder (C:\Temp):
with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(r "C: \T emp \T est.gdb \T estFC" , [ "TestField"
]) as cursor: for row in cursor:
print row[ 0 ]

Chapter 146: Abstract Base Classes (abc)

Section 146.1: Setting the ABCMeta metaclass

Abstract classes are classes that are meant to be inherited but avoid
implementing specific methods, leaving behind only method signatures
that subclasses must implement.
Abstract classes are useful for defining and enforcing class abstractions
at a high level, similar to the concept of interfaces in typed languages,
without the need for method implementation.

One conceptual approach to defining an abstract class is to stub out the

class methods, and then raise a NotImplementedError if accessed. This
prevents children classes from accessing parent methods without
overriding them first. Like so:

class Fruit:
def check_ripeness( self ):
raise NotImplementedError ( "check_ripeness method not implemented!"
)
class Apple(Fruit): pass
a = Apple()
a.check_ripeness() # raises NotImplementedError

Creating an abstract class in this way prevents improper usage of

methods that are not overridden, and certainly encourages methods to be
defined in child classes, but it does not enforce their definition. With the
abc module we can prevent child classes from being instantiated when
they fail to override abstract class methods of their parents and
ancestors:

from abc import ABCMeta

class AbstractClass(object ):
# the metaclass attribute must always be set as a class variable
__metaclass__ = ABCMeta

# the abstractmethod decorator registers this method as undefined @

abstractmethod
def virtual_method_subclasses_must_define(self ):

# Can be left completely blank, or a base implementation can be provided #

Note that ordinarily a blank interpretation implicitly returns `None`, # but
by registering, this behaviour is no longer enforced.

It is now possible to simply subclass and override:

class Subclass(AbstractClass):
def virtual_method_subclasses_must_define( self ): return

Section 146.2: Why/How to use ABCMeta and

@abstractmethod

Abstract base classes (ABCs) enforce what derived classes implement

particular methods from the base class. To understand how this works
and why we should use it, let's take a look at an example that Van
Rossum would enjoy. Let's say we have a Base class "MontyPython"
with two methods (joke & punchline) that must be implemented by all
derived classes.

class MontyPython:
def joke( self ):
raise NotImplementedError () def punchline( self ):
raise NotImplementedError ()
class ArgumentClinic(MontyPython): def joke( self ):
return "Hahahahahah" When we instantiate an object and call it's two
methods, we'll get an error (as expected) with the punchline() method.
>>> sketch = ArgumentClinic() >>> sketch.punchline()
NotImplementedError
However, this still allows us to instantiate an object of the
ArgumentClinic class without getting an error. In fact we don't get an
error until we look for the punchline().
This is avoided by using the Abstract Base Class (ABC) module. Let's see
how this works with the same example:
from abc import ABCMeta , abstractmethod

class MontyPython(metaclass= ABCMeta): @ abstractmethod

def joke(self ):

pass
@ abstractmethod
def punchline( self ): pass
class ArgumentClinic(MontyPython): def joke( self ):
return "Hahahahahah" This time when we try to instantiate an object
from the incomplete class, we immediately get a TypeError!

>>> c = ArgumentClinic()
TypeError :
"Can't instantiate abstract class ArgumentClinic with abstract methods
punchline"

In this case, it's easy to complete the class to avoid any TypeErrors:
class ArgumentClinic(MontyPython): def joke( self ):
return "Hahahahahah" def punchline( self ):
return "Send in the constable!" This time when you instantiate an object
it works!

Chapter 147: Plugin and Extension Classes

Section 147.1: Mixins

In Object oriented programming language, a mixin is a class that

contains methods for use by other classes without having to be the parent
class of those other classes. How those other classes gain access to the
mixin's methods depends on the language.

It provides a mechanism for multiple inheritance by allowing multiple

classes to use the common functionality, but without the complex
semantics of multiple inheritance. Mixins are useful when a programmer
wants to share functionality between different classes. Instead of
repeating the same code over and over again, the common functionality
can simply be grouped into a mixin and then inherited into each class
that requires it.

When we use more than one mixins, Order of mixins are important. here
is a simple example:
class Mixin1( object ):
def test ( self ):
print "Mixin1"
class Mixin2( object ):
def test ( self ):
print "Mixin2"
class MyClass(Mixin1 , Mixin2):
pass
In this example we call MyClass and test method,

>>> obj = MyClass() >>> obj.test ()

Mixin1

Result must be Mixin1 because Order is left to right. This could be show
unexpected results when super classes add with it. So reverse order is
more good just like this:
class MyClass(Mixin2 , Mixin1): pass
Result will be:

>>> obj = MyClass() >>> obj.test ()

Mixin2

Mixins can be used to define custom plugins.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0 class Base( object ): def test ( self ): print ( "Base." )

class PluginA(object ): def test (self ):

super ().test () print ("Plugin A." )

class PluginB(object ): def test (self ):

super ().test () print ("Plugin B." )

plugins = PluginA , PluginB

class PluginSystemA(PluginA , Base): pass
class PluginSystemB(PluginB , Base): pass

PluginSystemA(). test () # Base.

# Plugin A.

PluginSystemB(). test () # Base.

# Plugin B.

Section 147.2: Plugins with Customized Classes

In Python 3.6, PEP 487 added the __init_subclass__ special method,

which simplifies and extends class customization without using
metaclasses. Consequently, this feature allows for creating simple
plugins . Here we demonstrate this feature by modifying a prior
example:

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.6

class Base:
plugins = []
def __init_subclass__(cls, **kwargs):
super ().__init_subclass__(**kwargs)
cls.plugins.append(cls)

def test ( self ):

print ( "Base." )

class PluginA(Base):
def test (self ):
super ().test ()
print ("Plugin A." )

class PluginB(Base):
def test (self ):
super ().test () print ("Plugin B." )

Results:

PluginA(). test () # Base.

# Plugin A.

PluginB(). test () # Base.

# Plugin B.

Base.plugins # [__main__.PluginA, __main__.PluginB]

Chapter 148: Immutable datatypes(int, float, str,

tuple and frozensets)
Section 148.1: Individual characters of strings are not
assignable

foo = "bar"
foo[ 0 ] = "c" # Error
Immutable variable value can not be changed once they are created.

Section 148.2: Tuple's individual members aren't assignable

foo = ( "bar" , 1 , "Hello!" , )
foo[ 1 ] = 2 # ERROR!!
Second line would return an error since tuple members once created
aren't assignable. Because of tuple's immutability.

Section 148.3: Frozenset's are immutable and not assignable

foo = frozenset (["bar" , 1 , "Hello!" ])

foo[2 ] = 7 # ERROR
foo.add(3 ) # ERROR

Second line would return an error since frozenset members once created
aren't assignable. Third line would return error as frozensets do not
support functions that can manipulate members.

Chapter 149: Incompatibilities moving from Python

2 to Python 3
Unlike most languages, Python supports two major versions. Since 2008
when Python 3 was released, many have made the transition, while many
have not. In order to understand both, this section covers the important
differences between Python 2 and Python 3.

Section 149.1: Integer Division

The standard division symbol (/) operates differently in Python 3 and

Python 2 when applied to integers.

When dividing an integer by another integer in Python 3, the division

operation x / y represents a true division (uses __truediv__ method) and
produces a floating point result. Meanwhile, the same operation in
Python 2 represents a classic division that rounds the result down toward
negative infinity (also known as taking the floor ).

For example:
Code Python 2 output Python 3 output
3 / 2 1 1.5
2 / 3 0 0.6666666666666666
-3 / 2 -2 -1.5

The rounding-towards-zero behavior was deprecated in Python 2.2 , but

remains in Python 2.7 for the sake of backward compatibility and was
removed in Python 3.

Note: To get a float result in Python 2 (without floor rounding) we can

specify one of the operands with the decimal point. The above example of
2 /3 which gives 0 in Python 2 shall be used as 2 / 3.0 or 2.0 / 3 or 2.0 /3.0
to get 0.6666666666666666

Code Python 2 output Python 3 output 3.0 / 2.0 1.5 1.5

2 / 3.0 0.6666666666666666 0.6666666666666666
- 3.0 / 2 -1.5 -1.5

There is also the floor division operator (//), which works the same way
in both versions: it rounds down to the nearest integer. (although a float
is returned when used with floats) In both versions the // operator maps
to __floordiv__ .

Code Python 2 output Python 3 output

3 // 2 1 1
2 // 3 0 0
-3 // 2 -2 -2
3.0 // 2.0 1.0 1.0
2.0 // 3 0.0 0.0
-3 // 2.0 -2.0 -2.0

One can explicitly enforce true division or floor division using native
functions in the operator module:

from operator import truediv, floordiv assert truediv(10 , 8 ) == 1.25

assert floordiv(10 , 8 ) == 1

# equivalent to `/` in Python 3 # equivalent to `//`

While clear and explicit, using operator functions for every division can
be tedious. Changing the behavior of the / operator will often be
preferred. A common practice is to eliminate typical division behavior by
adding from __future__ import division as the first statement in each
module:

# needs to be the first statement in a module from __future__ import division

Code Python 2 output Python 3 output 3 / 2 1.5 1.5
2 / 3 0.6666666666666666 0.6666666666666666
- 3 / 2 -1.5 -1.5

from __future__ import division guarantees that the / operator represents

true division and only within the modules that contain the __future__
import, so there are no compelling reasons for not enabling it in all new
modules.

Note : Some other programming languages use rounding toward zero

(truncation) rather than rounding down toward negative infinity as
Python does (i.e. in those languages -3 / 2 == 1 ). This behavior may create
confusion when porting or comparing code.

Note on float operands : As an alternative to from __future__ import

division, one could use the usual division symbol / and ensure that at
least one of the operands is a float: 3 / 2.0 == 1.5 . However, this can be
considered bad practice. It is just too easy to write average = sum (items)
/ len (items) and forget to cast one of the arguments to float. Moreover,
such cases may frequently evade notice during testing, e.g., if you test on
an array containing float s but receive an array of int s in production.
Additionally, if the same code is used in Python 3, programs that expect
3 / 2 == 1 to be True will not work correctly.

See PEP 238 for more detailed rationale why the division operator was
changed in Python 3 and why old-style division should be avoided.
See the Simple Math topic for more about division.

Section 149.2: Unpacking Iterables

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
In Python 3, you can unpack an iterable without knowing the exact
number of items in it, and even have a variable hold the end of the
iterable. For that, you provide a variable that may collect a list of values.
This is done by placing an asterisk before the name. For example,
unpacking a list :

first , second, *tail, last = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] print (first)

# Out: 1
print (second)
# Out: 2
print (tail)
# Out: [3, 4]
print (last)
# Out: 5

Note: When using the *variable syntax, the variable will always be a list,
even if the original type wasn't a list. It may contain zero or more
elements depending on the number of elements in the original list.
first , second , *tail , last = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] print (tail)
# Out: [3]

first , second, *tail, last = [1 , 2 , 3 ] print (tail)

# Out: []
print (last)
# Out: 3

Similarly, unpacking a str :

begin , *tail = "Hello" print (begin)

# Out: 'H'
print (tail)
# Out: ['e', 'l', 'l', 'o']

Example of unpacking a date; _ is used in this example as a throwaway

variable (we are interested only in year value):

person = ('John' , 'Doe' , (10 , 16 , 2016 )) *_, (*_, year_of_birth) = person

print (year_of_birth)
# Out: 2016

It is worth mentioning that, since * eats up a variable number of items,

you cannot have two *s for the same iterable in an assignment - it wouldn't
know how many elements go into the first unpacking, and how many in
the second:
*head , *tail = [ 1 , 2 ]
# Out: SyntaxError: two starred expressions in assignment Python 3.x Version
≥ 3.5
So far we have discussed unpacking in assignments. * and ** were
extended in Python 3.5 . It's now possible to have several unpacking
operations in one expression:
{* range ( 4 ) , 4 , *( 5 , 6 , 7 )} # Out: {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7} Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0
It is also possible to unpack an iterable into function arguments:

iterable = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ] print (iterable)

# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] print (*iterable)
# Out: 1 2 3 4 5

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.5

Unpacking a dictionary uses two adjacent stars ** ( PEP 448 ):
tail = { 'y' : 2 , 'z' : 3 }
{ 'x' : 1 , **tail}
# Out: {'x': 1, 'y': 2, 'z': 3}
This allows for both overriding old values and merging dictionaries.

dict1 = {'x' : 1 , 'y' : 1 } dict2 = {'y' : 2 , 'z' : 3 }

{**dict1, **dict2}
# Out: {'x': 1, 'y': 2, 'z': 3}

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

Python 3 removed tuple unpacking in functions. Hence the following
doesn't work in Python 3

# Works in Python 2, but syntax error in Python 3: map (lambda (x, y): x +
y, zip (range (5 ), range (5 ))) # Same is true for non-lambdas:
def example((x, y)):
pass

# Works in both Python 2 and Python 3:

map (lambda x: x[0 ] + x[1 ], zip (range (5 ), range (5 ))) # And non-
lambdas, too:
def working_example(x_y):

x , y = x_y
pass
See PEP 3113 for detailed rationale.

Section 149.3: Strings: Bytes versus Unicode

Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7
In Python 2 there are two variants of string: those made of bytes with
type ( str ) and those made of text with type ( unicode ).
In Python 2, an object of type str is always a byte sequence, but is
commonly used for both text and binary data.
A string literal is interpreted as a byte string.
s = 'Cafe' # type(s) == str
There are two exceptions: You can define a Unicode (text) literal explicitly
by prefixing the literal with u:
s = u 'Café' # type(s) == unicode
b = 'Lorem ipsum' # type(b) == str
Alternatively, you can specify that a whole module's string literals should
create Unicode (text) literals:
from __future__ import unicode_literals
s = 'Café' # type(s) == unicode
b = 'Lorem ipsum' # type(b) == unicode
In order to check whether your variable is a string (either Unicode or a
byte string), you can use:
isinstance (s , basestring )
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
In Python 3, the str type is a Unicode text type.
s = 'Cafe' # type(s) == str
s = 'Café' # type(s) == str (note the accented trailing e)
Additionally, Python 3 added a bytes object , suitable for binary "blobs"
or writing to encoding-independent files. To create a bytes object, you
can prefix b to a string literal or call the string's encode method:

# Or, if you really need a byte string: s = b'Cafe' # type(s) == bytes s = 'Café'
.encode() # type(s) == bytes

To test whether a value is a string, use:

isinstance (s , str ) Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.3
It is also possible to prefix string literals with a u prefix to ease
compatibility between Python 2 and Python 3 code bases. Since, in
Python 3, all strings are Unicode by default, prepending a string literal
with u has no effect:
u 'Cafe' == 'Cafe'
Python 2’s raw Unicode string prefix ur is not supported, however:
>>> ur 'Café'
File "<stdin>" , line 1 ur 'Café'
^
SyntaxError : invalid syntax
Note that you must encode a Python 3 text ( str ) object to convert it into a
bytes representation of that text. The default encoding of this method is
UTF-8 .
You can use decode to ask a bytes object for what Unicode text it
represents:
>>> b.decode()
'Café'
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.6
While the bytes type exists in both Python 2 and 3, the unicode type only
exists in Python 2. To use Python 3's implicit Unicode strings in Python
2, add the following to the top of your code file:

from __future__ import unicode_literals print (repr ("hi" ))

# u'hi'

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

Another important difference is that indexing bytes in Python 3 results
in an int output like so:
b "abc" [ 0 ] == 97
Whilst slicing in a size of one results in a length 1 bytes object:
b "abc" [ 0 : 1 ] == b "a"
In addition, Python 3 fixes some unusual behavior with unicode, i.e.
reversing byte strings in Python 2. For example, the following issue is
resolved:

# -*- coding: utf8 -*

print ("Hi, my name is Łukasz Langa." ) print (u"Hi, my name is
Łukasz Langa." [::1 ]) print ("Hi, my name is Łukasz Langa." [::1 ])

# Output in Python 2
# Hi, my name is Łukasz Langa. # .agnaL zsaku Ł si eman ym ,iH # .agnaL
zsaku �� si eman ym ,iH

# Output in Python 3
# Hi, my name is Łukasz Langa. # .agnaL zsaku Ł si eman ym ,iH # .agnaL
zsaku Ł si eman ym ,iH

Section 149.4: Print statement vs. Print function

In Python 2, print is a statement:
Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

print "Hello World"

print
print "No newline" ,
print >> sys .stderr, "Error" print ("hello" )
print ()
print 1 , 2 , 3
print (1 , 2 , 3 )

# print a newline
# add trailing comma to remove newline # print to stderr
# print "hello", since ("hello") == "hello" # print an empty tuple "()"
# print space-separated arguments: "1 2 3" # print tuple "(1, 2, 3)"

In Python 3, print () is a function, with keyword arguments for common

uses:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
print "Hello World" # SyntaxError

print ("Hello World" )

print () # print a newline (must use parentheses) print ("No newline" ,
end= "" ) # end specifies what to append (defaults to newline) print
("Error" , file = sys .stderr) # file specifies the output buffer
print ("Comma" , "separated" , "output" , sep= "," ) # sep specifies the
separator print ("A" , "B" , "C" , sep= "" ) # null string for sep: prints as
ABC print ("Flush this" , flush= True ) # flush the output buffer, added in
Python 3.3 print (1 , 2 , 3 ) # print space-separated arguments: "1 2 3" print
((1 , 2 , 3 )) # print tuple "(1, 2, 3)"

The print function has the following parameters:

print (*objects , sep = ' ' , end = ' \n ' , file = sys .stdout , flush = False )
sep is what separates the objects you pass to print. For example:
print ( 'foo' , 'bar' , sep = '~' ) # out: foo~bar print ( 'foo' , 'bar' , sep = '.' )
foo.bar
end is what the end of the print statement is followed by. For example:
print ( 'foo' , 'bar' , end = '!' ) # out: foo bar!
Printing again following a non-newline ending print statement will print
to the same line:

print ('foo' , end= '~' ) print ('bar' )

# out: foo~bar

Note: For future compatibility, print function is also available in Python

2.6 onwards; however it cannot be used unless parsing of the print
statement is disabled with
from __future__ import print_function
This function has exactly same format as Python 3's, except that it lacks
the flush parameter. See PEP 3105 for rationale.

Section 149.5: Di ☐ erences between range and xrange functions

In Python 2, range function returns a list while xrange creates a special

xrange object, which is an immutable sequence, which unlike other built-
in sequence types, doesn't support slicing and has neither index nor
count methods:

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

print (range (1 , 10 ))
# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

print ( isinstance ( range ( 1 , 10 ) , list ))

# Out: True
print ( xrange ( 1 , 10 ))
# Out: xrange(1, 10)
print ( isinstance ( xrange ( 1 , 10 ) , xrange ))
# Out: True
In Python 3, xrange was expanded to the range sequence, which thus now
creates a range object. There is no xrange type:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0 print ( range ( 1 , 10 )) # Out: range(1, 10)
print ( isinstance ( range ( 1 , 10 ) , range )) # Out: True

# print(xrange(1, 10))
# The output will be:
#Traceback (most recent call last): # File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
#NameError: name 'xrange' is not defined

Additionally, since Python 3.2, range also supports slicing, index and
count:

print (range (1 , 10 )[3 :7 ]) # Out: range(3, 7)

print (range (1 , 10 ).count(5 )) # Out: 1

print ( range ( 1 , 10 ).index( 7 )) # Out: 6

The advantage of using a special sequence type instead of a list is that the
interpreter does not have to allocate memory for a list and populate it:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

# range(10000000000000000)
# The output would be:
# Traceback (most recent call last): # File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> #
MemoryError
print ( xrange ( 100000000000000000 )) # Out: xrange(100000000000000000)
Since the latter behaviour is generally desired, the former was removed
in Python 3. If you still want to have a list in Python 3, you can simply
use the list () constructor on a range object:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
print ( list ( range ( 1 , 10 )))
# Out: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Compatibility
In order to maintain compatibility between both Python 2.x and Python
3.x versions, you can use the builtins module from the external package
future to achieve both forward-compatibility and backward-compatibility :

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0

#forward-compatible
from builtins import range

for i in range ( 10 ** 8 ):
pass

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

#backward-compatible
from past.builtins import xrange

for i in xrange ( 10 ** 8 ): pass

The range in future library supports slicing, index and count in all Python
versions, just like the built-in method on Python 3.2+.

Section 149.6: Raising and handling Exceptions

This is the Python 2 syntax, note the commas , on the raise and except lines:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

try :
raise IOError , "input/output error"
except IOError , exc:
print exc

In Python 3, the , syntax is dropped and replaced by parenthesis and the

as keyword:

try : raise IOError ("input/output error" )

except IOError as exc:
print (exc)

For backwards compatibility, the Python 3 syntax is also available in

Python 2.6 onwards, so it should be used for all new code that does not
need to be compatible with previous versions.
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
Python 3 also adds exception chaining, wherein you can signal that some
other exception was the cause for this exception. For example

try : file = open ('database.db' )

except FileNotFoundError as e:
raise DatabaseError('Cannot open {}' ) from e

The exception raised in the except statement is of type DatabaseError,

but the original exception is marked as the __cause__ attribute of that
exception. When the traceback is displayed, the original exception will
also be displayed in the traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 2, in

FileNotFoundError

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 4, in

DatabaseError('Cannot open database.db')

If you throw in an except block without explicit chaining:

try : file = open ('database.db' )

except FileNotFoundError as e:
raise DatabaseError('Cannot open {}' )

The traceback is

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 2, in

FileNotFoundError

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 4, in

DatabaseError('Cannot open database.db')

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0

Neither one is supported in Python 2.x; the original exception and its
traceback will be lost if another exception is raised in the except block.
The following code can be used for compatibility:
import sys
import traceback

try : funcWithError()
except :
sys_vers = getattr (sys , 'version_info' , (0 , )) if sys_vers < (3 , 0 ):
traceback .print_exc()
raise Exception ("new exception" )

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.3

To "forget" the previously thrown exception, use raise from None

try : file = open ('database.db' )

except FileNotFoundError as e:
raise DatabaseError('Cannot open {}' ) from None

Now the traceback would simply be

Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 4, in

DatabaseError('Cannot open database.db')

Or in order to make it compatible with both Python 2 and 3 you may use
the six package like so:
import six try :
file = open ( 'database.db' )
except FileNotFoundError as e:
six.raise_from(DatabaseError( 'Cannot open {}' ) , None )
Section 149.7: Leaked variables in list comprehension

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

x = 'hello world!'
vowels = [x for x in 'AEIOU' ]

print (vowels)
# Out: ['A', 'E', 'I', 'O', 'U']
print (x)
# Out: 'U'

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

x = 'hello world!'
vowels = [x for x in 'AEIOU' ]

print (vowels)
# Out: ['A', 'E', 'I', 'O', 'U'] print (x)
# Out: 'hello world!'

As can be seen from the example, in Python 2 the value of x was leaked:
it masked hello world ! and printed out U, since this was the last value of x
when the loop ended.
However, in Python 3 x prints the originally defined hello world ! , since
the local variable from the list comprehension does not mask variables
from the surrounding scope.
Additionally, neither generator expressions (available in Python since
2.5) nor dictionary or set comprehensions (which were backported to
Python 2.7 from Python 3) leak variables in Python 2.
Note that in both Python 2 and Python 3, variables will leak into the
surrounding scope when using a for loop:

x = 'hello world!' vowels = []

for x in 'AEIOU' :

vowels.append(x) print (x)

# Out: 'U'

Section 149.8: True, False and None

In Python 2, True , False and None are built-in constants. Which means it's
possible to reassign them.

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0

True , False = False , True

True # False
False # True
You can't do this with None since Python 2.4.
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.4
None = None # SyntaxError: cannot assign to None
In Python 3, True , False , and None are now keywords.
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
True , False = False , True # SyntaxError: can't assign to keyword None = None
# SyntaxError: can't assign to keyword

Section 149.9: User Input

In Python 2, user input is accepted using the raw_input function,
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3
user_input = raw_input ()
While in Python 3 user input is accepted using the input function.
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
user_input = input ()
In Python 2, the input function will accept input and interpret it. While this
can be useful, it has several security considerations and was removed in
Python 3. To access the same functionality, eval ( input ()) can be used.
To keep a script portable across the two versions, you can put the code
below near the top of your Python script:

try :
input = raw_input
except NameError :

pass

Section 149.10: Comparison of di ☐ erent types

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

Objects of different types can be compared. The results are arbitrary,

but consistent. They are ordered such that None is less than anything
else, numeric types are smaller than non-numeric types, and everything
else is ordered lexicographically by type. Thus, an int is less than a str
and a tuple is greater than a list :

[ 1 , 2 ] > 'foo'
# Out: False
(1 , 2 ) > 'foo'
# Out: True
[1 , 2 ] > (1 , 2 )
# Out: False
100 < [1 , 'x' ] < 'xyz' < (1 , 'x' )
# Out: True

This was originally done so a list of mixed types could be sorted and
objects would be grouped together by type:

l = [7 , 'x' , (1 , 2 ), [5 , 6 ], 5 , 8.0 , 'y' , 1.2 , [7 , 8 ], 'z' ] sorted (l)

# Out: [1.2, 5, 7, 8.0, [5, 6], [7, 8], 'x', 'y', 'z', (1, 2)]

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

An exception is raised when comparing different (non-numeric) types:
1 < 1.5
# Out: True

[ 1 , 2 ] > 'foo'
# TypeError: unorderable types: list() > str() (1 , 2 ) > 'foo'
# TypeError: unorderable types: tuple() > str() [1 , 2 ] > (1 , 2 )
# TypeError: unorderable types: list() > tuple()

To sort mixed lists in Python 3 by types and to achieve compatibility

between versions, you have to provide a key to the sorted function:

>>> list = [1 , 'hello' , [3 , 4 ], {'python' : 2 }, 'stackoverflow' , 8 , {'python'

[5 , 6 ]] >>> sorted (list , key= str )
# Out: [1, 8, [3, 4], [5, 6], 'hello', 'stackoverflow', {'python': 2}, {'python':
3}]

Using str as the key function temporarily converts each item to a string
only for the purposes of comparison. It then sees the string
representation starting with either [, ', { or 0 -9 and it's able to sort those
(and all the following characters).

Section 149.11: .next() method on iterators renamed

In Python 2, an iterator can be traversed by using a method called next

on the iterator itself:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

g = (i for i in range (0 , 3 ))
g.next() # Yields 0
g.next() # Yields 1
g.next() # Yields 2

In Python 3 the .next method has been renamed to .__next__,

acknowledging its “magic” role, so calling .next will raise an
AttributeError . The correct way to access this functionality in both
Python 2 and Python 3 is to call the nextfunction with the iterator as an
argument.

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

g = (i for i in range (0 , 3 )) next(g) # Yields 0

next(g) # Yields 1
next(g) # Yields 2

This code is portable across versions from 2.6 through to current

releases.

Section 149.12: filter(), map() and zip() return iterators instead

of sequences
Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7
In Python 2 filter , map and zip built-in functions return a sequence. map
zip always return a list while with filter the return type depends on the
type of given parameter:

>>> s = filter (lambda x: x.isalpha(), 'a1b2c3' )

>>> s
'abc'
>>> s = map (lambda x: x * x, [0 , 1 , 2 ])
>>> s
[0 , 1 , 4 ]
>>> s = zip ([0 , 1 , 2 ], [3 , 4 , 5 ])
>>> s
[(0 , 3 ), (1 , 4 ), (2 , 5 )]

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

In Python 3 filter , map and zip return iterator instead:

>>> it = filter (lambda x: x.isalpha(), 'a1b2c3' ) >>> it

< filter object at 0x00000098A55C2518 >
>>> '' .join(it)
'abc'
>>> it = map (lambda x: x * x, [0 , 1 , 2 ]) >>> it
< map object at 0x000000E0763C2D30 >
>>> list (it)
[0 , 1 , 4 ]
>>> it = zip ([0 , 1 , 2 ], [3 , 4 , 5 ])
>>> it
< zip object at 0x000000E0763C52C8 >
>>> list (it)
[(0 , 3 ), (1 , 4 ), (2 , 5 )]

Since Python 2 itertools . izip is equivalent of Python 3 zip izip has been
removed on Python 3.

Section 149.13: Renamed modules

A few modules in the standard library have been renamed:

Old name _winreg

ConfigParser copy_reg
Queue
SocketServer _markupbase repr

New name winreg

configparser
copyreg
queue
socketserver
markupbase
reprlib

test.test_support test.support
Tkinter tkinter
tkFileDialog tkinter.filedialog
urllib / urllib2 urllib, urllib.parse, urllib.error, urllib.response,
urllib.request, urllib.robotparser

Some modules have even been converted from files to libraries. Take
tkinter and urllib from above as an example.
Compatibility
When maintaining compatibility between both Python 2.x and 3.x
versions, you can use the future external package to enable importing top-
level standard library packages with Python 3.x names on Python 2.x
versions.

Section 149.14: Removed operators <> and ``, synonymous with

!= and repr()
In Python 2, < > is a synonym for !=; likewise, `foo` is a synonym for repr
(foo).
Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

>>> 1 <> 2
True
>>> 1 <> 1
False
>>> foo = 'hello world'
>>> repr (foo)
"'hello world'"
>>> `foo`
"'hello world'"

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

>>> 1 <> 2
File "<stdin>" , line 1
1 <> 2
^
SyntaxError : invalid syntax
>>> `foo`
File "<stdin>" , line 1
`foo`
^
SyntaxError : invalid syntax

Section 149.15: long vs. int

In Python 2, any integer larger than a C ssize_t would be converted into
the long data type, indicated by an L suffix on the literal. For example, on
a 32 bit build of Python:

>>> 2 **31
2147483648L
>>> type (2 **31 )
< type 'long' >
>>> 2 **30
1073741824
>>> type (2 **30 )
< type 'int' >
>>> 2 **31 - 1 # 2**31 is long and long - int is long 2147483647L
However, in Python 3, the long data type was removed; no matter how big
the integer is, it will be an int .
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

2 **1024
# Output:
1797693134862315907729305190789024733617976978942306572734300811577326758
1120113879871393357658789768814416622492847430639474124377767893424865485
5208500576883815068234246288147391311054082723716335051068458629823994724
137216
print (-(2 **1024 ))
# Output:
-179769313486231590772930519078902473361797697894230657273430081157732675
2112011387987139335765878976881441662249284743063947412437776789342486548
9520850057688381506823424628814739131105408272371633505106845862982399472
4137216
type (2 **1024 )
# Output: <class 'int'>

Section 149.16: All classes are "new-style classes" in Python 3

In Python 3 .x all classes are new-style classes ; when defining a new class
python implicitly makes it inherit from object . As such, specifying object
in a class definition is a completely optional:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0 class X: pass
class Y( object ): pass
Both of these classes now contain object in their mro (method resolution
order):
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0 >>> X.__mro__
( __main__ .X , object )
>>> Y.__mro__
( __main__ .Y , object )
In Python 2 .x classes are, by default, old-style classes; they do not
implicitly inherit from object . This causes the semantics of classes to
differ depending on if we explicitly add object as a base class :

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3 class X: pass

class Y(object ): pass

In this case, if we try to print the __mro__ of Y, similar output as that in

the Python 3 .x case will appear:
>>> Y.__mro__
( < class '__main__.Y' >, < type 'object' > )

This happens because we explicitly made Y inherit from object when

defining it: class Y(object ): pass . For class X which does not inherit
from object the __mro__ attribute does not exist, trying to access it
results in an AttributeError .

In order to ensure compatibility between both versions of Python, classes

can be defined with object as a base class:
class mycls( object ):
"""I am fully compatible with Python 2/3"""
Alternatively, if the __metaclass__ variable is set to type at global scope, all
subsequently defined classes in a given module are implicitly new-style
without needing to explicitly inherit from object :
__metaclass__ = type
class mycls:
"""I am also fully compatible with Python 2/3"""

Section 149.17: Reduce is no longer a built-in

In Python 2, reduce is available either as a built-in function or from the

functools package (version 2.6 onwards), whereas in Python 3 reduce is
available only from functools. However the syntax for reduce in both
Python2 and Python3 is the same and is reduce (function_to_reduce,
list_to_reduce).

As an example, let us consider reducing a list to a single value by

dividing each of the adjacent numbers. Here we use truediv function from
the operator library.
In Python 2.x it is as simple as:

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

>>> my_list = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
>>> import operator
>>> reduce (operator .truediv, my_list)
0.008333333333333333

In Python 3.x the example becomes a bit more complicated:

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

>>> my_list = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
>>> import operator , functools
>>> functools.reduce (operator .truediv, my_list) 0.008333333333333333

We can also use from functools import reduce to avoid calling reduce with
the namespace name.

Section 149.18: Absolute/Relative Imports

In Python 3, PEP 404 changes the way imports work from Python 2.
Implicit relative imports are no longer allowed in packages and from ...
import * imports are only allowed in module level code.

To achieve Python 3 behavior in Python 2:

the absolute imports feature can be enabled with from __future__ import
absolute_import explicit relative imports are encouraged in place of
implicit relative imports

For clarification, in Python 2, a module can import the contents of

another module located in the same directory as follows:
import foo
Notice the location of foo is ambiguous from the import statement alone.
This type of implicit relative import is thus discouraged in favor of
explicit relative imports , which look like the following:

from .moduleY import spam

from .moduleY import spam as ham from . import moduleY
from ..subpackage1 import moduleY from ..subpackage2.moduleZ
import eggs from ..moduleA import foo
from ...package import bar
from ...sys import path
The dot . allows an explicit declaration of the module location within the
directory tree.
More on Relative Imports
Consider some user defined package called shapes. The directory
structure is as follows:

shapes
├── __init__ .py |
├── circle.py |
├── square.py |
└── triangle.py

circle.py, square.py and triangle.py all import util.py as a module. How

will they refer to a module in the same level?
from . import util # use util.PI, util.sq(x), etc
OR
from .util import * #use PI, sq(x), etc to call functions
The . is used for same-level relative imports.
Now, consider an alternate layout of the shapes module:

shapes
├── __init__ .py |
├── circle
│ ├── __init__ .py │ └── circle.py |
├── square
│ ├── __init__ .py │ └── square.py |
├── triangle
│ ├── __init__ .py │ ├── triangle.py |
└── util.py

Now, how will these 3 classes refer to util.py?

from .. import util # use util.PI, util.sq(x), etc
OR
from ..util import * # use PI, sq(x), etc to call functions The .. is used for
parent-level relative imports. Add more .s with number of levels between
the parent and child.
Section 149.19: map()

map () is a builtin that is useful for applying a function to elements of an

iterable. In Python 2, map returns a list. In Python 3, map returns a map
object , which is a generator.

# Python 2.X
>>> map (str , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])
['1' , '2' , '3' , '4' , '5' ]
>>> type (_)
>>> < class 'list' >

# Python 3.X
>>> map (str , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])
< map object at 0x*>
>>> type (_)
< class 'map' >

# We need to apply map again because we "consumed" the previous map....

>>> map (str , [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])
>>> list (_)
['1' , '2' , '3' , '4' , '5' ]

In Python 2, you can pass None to serve as an identity function. This no

longer works in Python 3.

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

>>> map (None , [0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 0 , 4 ])
[0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 0 , 4 ]

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

>>> list ( map ( None , [ 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 0 , 5 ])) Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module > TypeError : 'NoneType' object is not
callable
Moreover, when passing more than one iterable as argument in Python
2, map pads the shorter iterables with None (similar to itertools
.izip_longest). In Python 3, iteration stops after the shortest iterable. In
Python 2:
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3
>>> map ( None , [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] , [ 1 , 2 ] , [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])
[( 1 , 1 , 1 ) , ( 2 , 2 , 2 ) , ( 3 , None , 3 ) , ( None , None , 4 ) , ( None , None ,
In Python 3:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
>>> list ( map ( lambda x , y , z: (x , y , z) , [ 1 , 2 , 3 ] , [ 1 , 2 ] , [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

# to obtain the same padding as in Python 2 use zip_longest from itertools

>>> import itertools
>>> list (itertools .zip_longest([1 , 2 , 3 ], [1 , 2 ], [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ])) [(1 , 1 , 1
(3 , None , 3 ), (None , None , 4 ), (None , None , 5 )]

Note: instead of map consider using list comprehensions, which are

Python 2/3 compatible. Replacing map ( str , [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]):
>>> [ str (i) for i in [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]] [ '1' , '2' , '3' , '4' , '5' ]

Section 149.20: The round() function tie-breaking and return

type
round() tie breaking
In Python 2, using round () on a number equally close to two integers will
return the one furthest from 0. For example:
Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

round (1.5 ) # Out: 2.0

round (0.5 ) # Out: 1.0
round (0.5 ) # Out: -1.0
round (1.5 ) # Out: -2.0

In Python 3 however, round () will return the even integer (aka bankers'
rounding ). For example:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

round (1.5 ) # Out: 2 round (0.5 ) # Out: 0 round (0.5 ) # Out: 0 round (1.5
# Out: -2

The round() function follows the half to even rounding strategy that will
round half-way numbers to the nearest even integer (for example, round (
2.5 ) now returns 2 rather than 3.0).
As per reference in Wikipedia , this is also known as unbiased rounding ,
convergent rounding , statistician's rounding , Dutch rounding , Gaussian
rounding , or odd-even rounding .
Half to even rounding is part of the IEEE 754 standard and it's also the
default rounding mode in Microsoft's .NET.
This rounding strategy tends to reduce the total rounding error. Since on
average the amount of numbers that are rounded up is the same as the
amount of numbers that are rounded down, rounding errors cancel out.
Other rounding methods instead tend to have an upwards or downwards
bias in the average error. round() return type
The round () function returns a float type in Python 2.7
Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7 round ( 4.8 )
# 5.0
Starting from Python 3.0, if the second argument (number of digits) is
omitted, it returns an int .
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0 round ( 4.8 )
#5

Section 149.21: File I/O

file is no longer a builtin name in 3.x ( open still works).
Internal details of file I/O have been moved to the standard library io
module, which is also the new home of StringIO :

import io
assert io.open is open # the builtin is an alias
buffer = io.StringIO ()
buffer.write('hello, ' ) # returns number of characters written
buffer.write('world! \n ' )
buffer.getvalue() # 'hello, world!\n'

The file mode (text vs binary) now determines the type of data produced
by reading a file (and type required for writing):

with open ('data.txt' ) as f:

first_line = next(f)
assert type (first_line) is str

with open ('data.bin' , 'rb' ) as f: first_kb = f.read(1024 )

assert type (first_kb) is bytes

The encoding for text files defaults to whatever is returned by locale

.getpreferredencoding( False ). To specify an encoding explicitly, use the
encoding keyword parameter:
with open ( 'old_japanese_poetry.txt' , 'shift_jis' ) as text: haiku = text.read()

Section 149.22: cmp function removed in Python 3

In Python 3 the cmp built-in function was removed, together with the
__cmp__ special method.
From the documentation:

The cmp () function should be treated as gone, and the __cmp__ ()

special method is no longer supported. Use __lt__ () for sorting, __eq__ ()
with __hash__ (), and other rich comparisons as needed. (If you really
need the cmp () functionality, you could use the expression (a > b) - (a <
b) as the equivalent for cmp (a, b).)

Moreover all built-in functions that accepted the cmp parameter now only
accept the key keyword only parameter.
In the functools module there is also useful function cmp_to_key ( func ) that
allows you to convert from a cmp -style function to a key-style function:

Transform an old-style comparison function to a key function. Used with

tools that accept key functions (such as sorted (), min (), max (), heapq .
nlargest(), heapq . nsmallest(), itertools . groupby()). This function is
primarily used as a transition tool for programs being converted from
Python 2 which supported the use of comparison functions.

Section 149.23: Octal Constants

In Python 2, an octal literal could be defined as
>>> 0755 # only Python 2
To ensure cross-compatibility, use
0o755 # both Python 2 and Python 3

Section 149.24: Return value when writing to a file object

In Python 2, writing directly to a file handle returns None :
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

hi = sys .stdout.write('hello world \\ n' )

# Out: hello world
type (hi)
# Out: <type 'NoneType'>

In Python 3, writing to a handle will return the number of characters

written when writing text, and the number of bytes written when writing
bytes:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0
import sys

char_count = sys .stdout.write('hello world ? \\ n' )

# Out: hello world ?
char_count
# Out: 14

byte_count = sys .stdout.buffer.write(b'hello world \\ xf0 \\ x9f \\ x90 \\ x8d

)
# Out: hello world ?
byte_count
# Out: 17

Section 149.25: exec statement is a function in Python 3

In Python 2, exec is a statement, with special syntax: exec code [ in globals
locals ]]. In Python 3 exec is now a function: exec ( code , [ , globals [ , locals
and the Python 2 syntax will raise a SyntaxError .

As print was changed from statement into a function, a __future__

import was also added. However, there is no from __future__ import
exec_function, as it is not needed: the exec statement in Python 2 can be
also used with syntax that looks exactly like the exec function invocation
in Python 3. Thus you can change the statements

Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.3

exec 'code'

exec 'code' in global_vars

exec 'code' in global_vars , local_vars
to forms
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

exec ('code' )
exec ('code' , global_vars)
exec ('code' , global_vars, local_vars)

and the latter forms are guaranteed to work identically in both Python 2
and Python 3.

Section 149.26: encode/decode to hex no longer available

Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

"1deadbeef3" .decode('hex' )
# Out: '\x1d\xea\xdb\xee\xf3'
' \x 1d \x ea \x db \x ee \x f3' .encode('hex' )
# Out: 1deadbeef3

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

"1deadbeef3" .decode('hex' )
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
# AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode'

b "1deadbeef3" .decode('hex' )
# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
# LookupError: 'hex' is not a text encoding; use codecs.decode() to handle
arbitrary codecs

' \x 1d \x ea \x db \x ee \x f3' .encode('hex' )

# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
# LookupError: 'hex' is not a text encoding; use codecs.encode() to handle
arbitrary codecs

b ' \x 1d \x ea \x db \x ee \x f3' .encode('hex' )

# Traceback (most recent call last):
# File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
# AttributeError: 'bytes' object has no attribute 'encode'

However, as suggested by the error message, you can use the codecs
module to achieve the same result:

import codecs
codecs .decode('1deadbeef4' , 'hex' )
# Out: b'\x1d\xea\xdb\xee\xf4'
codecs .encode(b' \x 1d \x ea \x db \x ee \x f4' , 'hex' ) # Out: b'1deadbeef4'

Note that codecs . encode returns a bytes object. To obtain a str object just
decode to ASCII:
codecs .encode(b ' \x 1d \x ea \x db \x ee \x ff' , 'hex' ).decode( 'ascii' ) # Out:
'1deadbeeff'

Section 149.27: Dictionary method changes

In Python 3, many of the dictionary methods are quite different in

behaviour from Python 2, and many were removed as well: has_key, iter
* and view* are gone. Instead of d.has_key(key), which had been long
deprecated, one must now use key in d.

In Python 2, dictionary methods keys, values and items return lists. In

Python 3 they return view objects instead; the view objects are not
iterators, and they differ from them in two ways, namely:
they have size (one can use the len function on them)
they can be iterated over many times
Additionally, like with iterators, the changes in the dictionary are
reflected in the view objects.
Python 2.7 has backported these methods from Python 3; they're
available as viewkeys, viewvalues and viewitems. To transform Python 2
code to Python 3 code, the corresponding forms are:

d.keys() , d.values() and d.items() of Python 2 should be changed to list

(d.keys()), list (d.values()) and list (d.items())
d.iterkeys(), d.itervalues() and d.iteritems() should be changed to iter
(d.keys()), or even better, iter (d); iter (d.values()) and iter (d.items())
respectively
and finally Python 2.7 method calls d.viewkeys(), d.viewvalues() and
d.viewitems() can be replaced with d.keys(), d.values() and d.items().

Porting Python 2 code that iterates over dictionary keys, values or items
while mutating it is sometimes tricky. Consider:
d = { 'a' : 0 , 'b' : 1 , 'c' : 2 , '!' : 3 } for key in d.keys():
if key.isalpha():
del d[key]

The code looks as if it would work similarly in Python 3, but there the
keys method returns a view object, not a list, and if the dictionary
changes size while being iterated over, the Python 3 code will crash with
RuntimeError : dictionary changed size during iteration. The solution is
of course to properly write for key in list (d).

Similarly, view objects behave differently from iterators: one cannot use
next() on them, and one cannot resume iteration; it would instead
restart; if Python 2 code passes the return value of d.iterkeys(),
d.itervalues() or d.iteritems() to a method that expects an iterator instead
of an iterable , then that should be iter (d), iter (d.values()) or iter
(d.items()) in Python 3.

Section 149.28: Class Boolean Value

Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7
In Python 2, if you want to define a class boolean value by yourself, you
need to implement the __nonzero__ method on your class. The value is
True by default.
class MyClass:
def __nonzero__ ( self ):
return False

my_instance = MyClass()
print bool (MyClass) # True print bool (my_instance) # False

Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

In Python 3, __bool__ is used instead of __nonzero__

class MyClass:
def __bool__(self ): return False

my_instance = MyClass()
print (bool (MyClass)) # True print (bool (my_instance)) # False

Section 149.29: hasattr function bug in Python 2

In Python 2, when a property raise an error, hasattr will ignore this
property, returning False .

class A(object ):
@ property
def get(self ):

raise IOError

class B(object ):
@ property
def get(self ):

return 'get in b'

a = A() b = B()
print 'a hasattr get: ' , hasattr (a, 'get' ) # output False in Python 2 (fixed,
True in Python 3) print 'b hasattr get' , hasattr (b, 'get' )
# output True in Python 2 and Python 3

This bug is fixed in Python3. So if you use Python 2, use

try : a.get
except AttributeError :
print ("no get property!" )

or use getattr instead

p = getattr (a, "get" , None ) if p is not None :

print (p)

else :
print ( "no get property!" )

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Chapter 150: 2to3 tool
Parameter filename / directory_name
Option
-f FIX, --fix=FIX

-j PROCESSES, --processes=PROCESSES
-x NOFIX, --nofix=NOFIX
-l, --list-fixes
-p, --print-function
-v, --verbose
--no-diffs
-w
-n, --nobackups

-o OUTPUT_DIR, --output
dir=OUTPUT_DIR
-W, --write-unchanged-files
--add-suffix=ADD_SUFFIX

Description
2to3 accepts a list of files or directories which is to be transformed as its
argument. The directories are recursively traversed for Python sources.
Option Description
Specify transformations to be applied; default: all. List available
transformations with --list-fixes
Run 2to3 concurrently
Exclude a transformation
List available transformations
Change the grammar so that print () is considered a function More
verbose output
Do not output diffs of the refactoring
Write back modified files
Do not create backups of modified files
Place output files in this directory instead of overwriting input files.
Requires the -n flag, as backup files are unnecessary when the input files
are not modified.
Write output files even is no changes were required. Useful with -o so
that a complete source tree is translated and copied. Implies -w. Specify
a string to be appended to all output filenames. Requires -n if non-
empty. Ex.: --add-suffix= '3' will generate .py3 files.

Section 150.1: Basic Usage

Consider the following Python2.x code. Save the file as example.py
Python 2.x Version ≥ 2.0
def greet(name):
print "Hello, {0}!" .format(name)

print "What's your name?"

name = raw_input ()
greet(name)

In the above file, there are several incompatible lines. The raw_input ()
method has been replaced with input () in Python 3.x and print is no
longer a statement, but a function. This code can be converted to Python
3.x code using the 2to3 tool.

Unix
$ 2to3 example.py
Windows
> path/to/2to3.py example.py
Running the above code will output the differences against the original
source file as shown below.

RefactoringTool: Skipping implicit fixer: buffer RefactoringTool:

Skipping implicit fixer: idioms RefactoringTool: Skipping implicit fixer:
set_literal RefactoringTool: Skipping implicit fixer: ws_comma
RefactoringTool: Refactored example.py
--- example.py (original)
+++ example.py (refactored)
@@ 1 , 5 +1 , 5 @@

def greet(name):
- print "Hello, {0}!" .format(name)
-print "What's your name?"
-name = raw_input ()
+ print ("Hello, {0}!" .format(name))
+print ("What's your name?" )
+name = input ()

greet(name)
RefactoringTool: Files that need to be modified: RefactoringTool:
example.py

The modifications can be written back to the source file using the -w flag.
A backup of the original file called example.py.bak is created, unless the
-n flag is given.
Unix
$ 2to3 -w example.py
Windows
> path/to/2to3.py -w example.py
Now the example.py file has been converted from Python 2.x to Python
3.x code.
Once finished, example.py will contain the following valid Python3.x
code:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

def greet(name):
print ("Hello, {0}!" .format(name))
print ("What's your name?" )
name = input ()
greet(name)

Chapter 151: Non-o☐cial Python implementations

Section 151.1: IronPython

Open-source implementation for .NET and Mono written in C#, licensed

under Apache License 2.0. It relies on DLR (Dynamic Language
Runtime). It supports only version 2.7, version 3 is currently being
developed.
Differences with CPython:

Tight integration with .NET Framework.

Strings are Unicode by default.
Does not support extensions for CPython written in C.
Does not suffer from Global Interpreter Lock.
Performance is usually lower, though it depends on tests.

Hello World
print "Hello World!"
You can also use .NET functions:

import clr
from System import Console
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!" )

External links
Official website
GitHub repository

Section 151.2: Jython

Open-source implementation for JVM written in Java, licensed under
Python Software Foundation License. It supports only version 2.7,
version 3 is currently being developed.
Differences with CPython:

Tight integration with JVM.

Strings are Unicode.
Does not support extensions for CPython written in C.
Does not suffer from Global Interpreter Lock.
Performance is usually lower, though it depends on tests.

Hello World
print "Hello World!"
You can also use Java functions:
from java.lang import System System.out.println( "Hello World!" )
External links
Official website
Mercurial repository

Section 151.3: Transcrypt

Transcrypt is a tool to precompile a fairly extensive subset of Python into
compact, readable Javascript. It has the following characteristics:

Allows for classical OO programming with multiple inheritance using

pure Python syntax, parsed by CPython’s native parser
Seamless integration with the universe of high-quality web-oriented
JavaScript libraries, rather than the desktop-oriented Python ones
Hierarchical URL based module system allowing module distribution via
PyPi
Simple relation between Python source and generated JavaScript code
for easy debugging Multi-level sourcemaps and optional annotation of
target code with source references Compact downloads, kB’s rather than
MB’s
Optimized JavaScript code, using memoization (call caching) to
optionally bypass the prototype lookup chain Operator overloading can
be switched on and off locally to facilitate readable numerical math

Code size and speed

Experience has shown that 650 kB of Python sourcecode roughly

translates in the same amount of JavaScript source code. The speed
matches the speed of handwritten JavaScript and can surpass it if call
memoizing is switched on.

Integration with HTML

<script src = "__javascript__/hello.js" ></script> <h2>Hello demo</h2>

<p>
<div id = "greet" >...</div>
<button onclick = "hello.solarSystem.greet ()" >Click me repeatedly!
</button>

<p>
<div id = "explain" >...</div>
<button onclick = "hello.solarSystem.explain ()" >And click me
repeatedly too!</button>

Integration with JavaScript and DOM

from itertools import chain

class SolarSystem:
planets = [ list ( chain ( planet, ( index + 1 ,))) for index, planet in
enumerate (( ( 'Mercury' , 'hot' , 2240 ),
( 'Venus' , 'sulphurous' , 6052 ),
( 'Earth' , 'fertile' , 6378 ),
( 'Mars' , 'reddish' , 3397 ),
( 'Jupiter' , 'stormy' , 71492 ),
( 'Saturn' , 'ringed' , 60268 ),
( 'Uranus' , 'cold' , 25559 ),
( 'Neptune' , 'very cold' , 24766 )

))]

lines = (
'{} is a {} planet' ,
'The radius of {} is {} km' ,
'{} is planet nr. {} counting from the sun'

)
def __init__ ( self ): self. lineIndex = 0

def greet ( self):

self.planet = self.planets [ int ( Math.random () * len ( self.planets ))]
document.getElementById ( 'greet' ) .innerHTML = 'Hello {}' .format (
self.planet [ 0 ]) self.explain ()

def explain ( self ):

document. getElementById ( 'explain' ) . innerHTML = (
self. lines [ self. lineIndex ] . format ( self. planet [ 0 ], self. planet [ self. lineIndex
]) )
self. lineIndex = ( self. lineIndex + 1 ) % 3
solarSystem = SolarSystem ()
Integration with other JavaScript libraries
Transcrypt can be used in combination with any JavaScript library
without special measures or syntax. In the documentation examples are
given for a.o. react.js, riot.js, fabric.js and node.js.
Relation between Python and JavaScript code
Python
class A:
def __init__ ( self , x): self .x = x
def show ( self , label):
print ( 'A.show' , label , self .x)

class B:
def __init__ (self , y):
alert ('In B constructor' ) self .y = y

def show ( self , label):

print ( 'B.show' , label , self .y)

class C (A, B):

def __init__ (self , x, y): alert ('In C constructor' ) A.__init__ (self , x)
B.__init__ (self , y) self .show ('constructor' )

def show (self , label):

B.show (self , label)
print ('C.show' , label, self .x, self .y)

a = A ( 1001 )
a.show ( 'america' )
b = B ( 2002 )
b.show ( 'russia' )
c = C ( 3003 , 4004 ) c.show ( 'netherlands' )
show2 = c.show show2 ( 'copy' )
JavaScript
var A = __class__ ( 'A' , [ object ] , {
get __init__ () { return __get__ (this , function ( self , x) { self .x = x ;
}) ; } ,
get show () { return __get__ (this , function ( self , label) { print ( 'A.show'
self .x) ;

}) ; }
});
var B = __class__ ('B' , [object ], {

get __init__ () {return __get__ (this, function (self , y) { alert ('In B

constructor' );
self .y = y;

}) ; } ,
get show () { return __get__ (this , function ( self , label) { print ( 'B.show'
self .y) ;

}) ; }
});
var C = __class__ ('C' , [A, B], {

get __init__ () {return __get__ (this, function (self , x, y) { alert ('In C

constructor' );
A.__init__ (self , x);
B.__init__ (self , y);
self .show ('constructor' );

}) ; },
get show () {return __get__ (this, function (self , label) { B.show (self ,
label);
print ('C.show' , label, self .x, self .y);
}); }
});
var a = A (1001 );
a.show ('america' );
var b = B (2002 );
b.show ('russia' );
var c = C (3003 , 4004 );
c.show ('netherlands' );
var show2 = c.show;
show2 ('copy' );
External links
Official website: http://www.transcrypt.org/ Repository:
https://github.com/JdeH/Transcrypt

Chapter 152: Abstract syntax tree

Section 152.1: Analyze functions in a python script

This analyzes a python script and, for each defined function, reports the
line number where the function began, where the signature ends, where
the docstring ends, and where the function definition ends.
#!/usr/local/bin/python3
import ast
import sys

""" The data we collect. Each key is a function name; each value is a dict
with keys: firstline, sigend, docend, and lastline and values of line
numbers where that happens. """
functions = {}

def process(functions):
""" Handle the function data stored in functions. """
for funcname, data in functions.items():

print ("function:" , funcname)

print (" \t starts at line:" , data['firstline' ])
print (" \t signature ends at line:" , data['sigend' ])
if ( data['sigend' ] < data['docend' ] ):

print (" \t docstring ends at line:" , data['docend' ])

else :
print (" \t no docstring" )
print (" \t function ends at line:" , data['lastline' ])
print ()

class FuncLister(ast.NodeVisitor):
def visit_FunctionDef(self , node):
""" Recursively visit all functions, determining where each function
starts, where its signature ends, where the docstring ends, and where the
function ends. """
functions[node.name] = {'firstline' :node.lineno}
sigend = max (node.lineno, lastline(node.args))
functions[node.name]['sigend' ] = sigend
docstring = ast.get_docstring(node)
docstringlength = len (docstring.split(' \n ' )) if docstring else 1
functions[node.name]['docend' ] = sigend+docstringlength
functions[node.name]['lastline' ] = lastline(node)
self .generic_visit(node)

def lastline(node):
""" Recursively find the last line of a node """
return max ( [ node.lineno if hasattr (node, 'lineno' ) else 1 , ]

+[lastline(child) for child in ast.iter_child_nodes(node)] )

def readin(pythonfilename):
""" Read the file name and store the function data into functions. """
with open (pythonfilename) as f:

code = f.read()
FuncLister().visit(ast.parse( code ))

def analyze(file , process):

""" Read the file and process the function data. """ readin(file )
process(functions)

if __name__ == '__main__' :
if len ( sys .argv) > 1 :
for file in sys .argv[ 1 :]: analyze( file , process) else :
analyze( sys .argv[ 0 ] , process)

Chapter 153: Unicode and bytes

Parameter Details
encoding The encoding to use, e.g. 'ascii' , 'utf8' , etc...

errors
The errors mode, e.g. 'replace' to replace bad characters with question
marks, 'ignore' to ignore bad characters, etc...

Section 153.1: Encoding/decoding error handling

.encode and .decode both have error modes.
The default is 'strict' , which raises exceptions on error. Other modes are
more forgiving.
Encoding

>>> "£13.55" .encode('ascii' , errors= 'replace' )

b'?13.55'
>>> "£13.55" .encode('ascii' , errors= 'ignore' )
b'13.55'
>>> "£13.55" .encode('ascii' , errors= 'namereplace' )
b' \\ N{POUND SIGN}13.55'
>>> "£13.55" .encode('ascii' , errors= 'xmlcharrefreplace' )
b'&#163;13.55'
>>> "£13.55" .encode('ascii' , errors= 'backslashreplace' )
b' \\ xa313.55'

Decoding

>>> b = "£13.55" .encode('utf8' )

>>> b.decode('ascii' , errors= 'replace' )
'��13.55'
>>> b.decode('ascii' , errors= 'ignore' )
'13.55'
>>> b.decode('ascii' , errors= 'backslashreplace' )
' \\ xc2 \\ xa313.55'

Morale
It is clear from the above that it is vital to keep your encodings straight
when dealing with unicode and bytes.
Section 153.2: File I/O

Files opened in a non-binary mode (e.g. 'r' or 'w' ) deal with strings. The
default encoding is 'utf8' .
open (fn , mode = 'r' ) # opens file for reading in utf8 open (fn , mode = 'r'
encoding = 'utf16' ) # opens file for reading utf16
# ERROR: cannot write bytes when a string is expected:
open ( "foo.txt" , "w" ).write(b "foo" )
Files opened in a binary mode (e.g. 'rb' or 'wb' ) deal with bytes. No
encoding argument can be specified as there is no encoding.
open (fn , mode = 'wb' ) # open file for writing bytes
# ERROR: cannot write string when bytes is expected: open (fn , mode = 'wb'
).write( "hi" )

Section 153.3: Basics

In Python 3 str is the type for unicode-enabled strings, while bytes is the
type for sequences of raw bytes.
type ( "f" ) == type (u "f" ) # True, <class 'str'>
type (b "f" ) # <class 'bytes'>
In Python 2 a casual string was a sequence of raw bytes by default and
the unicode string was every string with "u" prefix.
type ( "f" ) == type (b "f" ) # True, <type 'str'> type (u "f" ) # <type 'unicode'>
Unicode to bytes
Unicode strings can be converted to bytes with .encode(encoding).
Python 3

>>> "£13.55" .encode('utf8' )

b' \x c2 \x a313.55'
>>> "£13.55" .encode('utf16' )
b' \x ff \x fe \x a3 \x 001 \x 003 \x 00. \x 005 \x 005 \x 00'

Python 2
in py2 the default console encoding is sys .getdefaultencoding() == 'ascii'
and not utf 8 as in py3, therefore printing it as in the previous example is
not directly possible.
>>> print type (u"£13.55" .encode('utf8' )) < type 'str' >
>>> print u"£13.55" .encode('utf8' )
SyntaxError : Non-ASCII character ' \x c2' in ...

# with encoding set inside a file

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*

>>> print u"£13.55" .encode('utf8' ) ┬ú13.55

If the encoding can't handle the string, a `UnicodeEncodeError` is

raised:
>>> "£13.55" .encode( 'ascii' )
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

UnicodeEncodeError : 'ascii' codec can't encode character ' \xa3' in
position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

Bytes to unicode
Bytes can be converted to unicode strings with .decode(encoding).
A sequence of bytes can only be converted into a unicode string via the
appropriate encoding!
>>> b ' \x c2 \x a313.55' .decode( 'utf8' ) '£13.55'
If the encoding can't handle the string, a UnicodeDecodeError is raised:
>>> b ' \x c2 \x a313.55' .decode( 'utf16' )

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
File "/Users/csaftoiu/csaftoiu-github/yahoo-groups
backup/.virtualenv/bin/../lib/python3.5/encodings/utf_16.py" , line 16 , in
decode

return codecs .utf_16_decode( input , errors , True )

UnicodeDecodeError : 'utf-16-le' codec can 't decode byte 0x35 in position
6: truncated data

Chapter 154: Python Serial Communication

(pyserial)
parameter details
port Device name e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0 on GNU/Linux or COM3 on
Windows.
baudrate baudrate type: int default: 9600 standard values: 50, 75, 110,
134, 150, 200, 300, 600, 1200, 1800, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400,
57600, 115200

Section 154.1: Initialize serial device

import serial
#Serial takes these two parameters: serial device and baudrate
ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB0' , 9600 )

Section 154.2: Read from serial port

Initialize serial device

import serial
#Serial takes two parameters: serial device and baudrate ser =
serial.Serial('/dev/ttyUSB0' , 9600 )

to read single byte from serial device

data = ser.read()
to read given number of bytes from the serial device
data = ser.read(size = 5 )
to read one line from serial device.
data = ser. readline ()
to read the data from serial device while something is being written over
it.
#for python2.7
data = ser.read(ser.inWaiting())
#for python3
ser.read(ser.inWaiting)
Section 154.3: Check what serial ports are available on your
machine

To get a list of available serial ports use

python -m serial.tools.list_ports
at a command prompt or
from serial.tools import list_ports list_ports.comports() # Outputs list of
available serial ports from the Python shell.

Chapter 155: Neo4j and Cypher using Py2Neo

Section 155.1: Adding Nodes to Neo4j Graph

results = News.objects.todays_news()
for r in results:
article = graph.merge_one("NewsArticle" , "news_id" , r)
article.properties["title" ] = results[r]['news_title' ]
article.properties["timestamp" ] = results[r]['news_timestamp' ]
article.push()
[...]

Adding nodes to the graph is pretty simple,graph.merge_one is

important as it prevents duplicate items. (If you run the script twice,
then the second time it would update the title and not create new nodes
for the same articles)
timestamp should be an integer and not a date string as neo4j doesn't
really have a date datatype. This causes sorting issues when you store
date as '05-06-1989'
article.push() is an the call that actually commits the operation into
neo4j. Don't forget this step.

Section 155.2: Importing and Authenticating

from py2neo import authenticate, Graph, Node, Relationship

authenticate("localhost:7474" , "neo4j" , "<pass>" )
graph = Graph()
You have to make sure your Neo4j Database exists at localhost:7474 with
the appropriate credentials.
the graph object is your interface to the neo4j instance in the rest of your
python code. Rather than making this a global variable, you should keep
it in a class's __init__ method.

Section 155.3: Adding Relationships to Neo4j Graph

results = News.objects.todays_news()
for r in results:
article = graph.merge_one("NewsArticle" , "news_id" , r)
if 'LOCATION' in results[r].keys():
for loc in results[r]['LOCATION' ]:
loc = graph.merge_one("Location" , "name" , loc)
try :
rel = graph.create_unique(Relationship(article, "about_place" , loc))
except Exception , e:
print e

create_unique is important for avoiding duplicates. But otherwise it's a

pretty straightforward operation. The relationship name is also
important as you would use it in advanced cases.

Section 155.4: Query 1 : Autocomplete on News Titles

def get_autocomplete(text):
query = """
start n = node(*) where n.name =~ '(?i)%s.*' return n.name,labels(n)
limit 10; """

query = query % (text)

obj = []
for res in graph.cypher.execute(query):

# print res[0],res[1]
obj.append({ 'name' :res[ 0 ] , 'entity_type' :res[ 1 ]}) return res
This is a sample cypher query to get all nodes with the property name
that starts with the argument text.

Section 155.5: Query 2 : Get News Articles by Location on a

particular date

def search_news_by_entity(location, timestamp): query = """

MATCH (n)-[]->(l)
where l.name='%s' and n.timestamp='%s' RETURN n.news_id limit 10
"""

query = query % (location , timestamp)

news_ids = []
for res in graph.cypher.execute(query): news_ids.append( str (res[ 0 ]))
return news_ids You can use this query to find all news articles (n)
connected to a location (l) by a relationship.

Section 155.6: Cypher Query Samples

Count articles connected to a particular person over time

MATCH (n)-[]> (l)

where l.name= 'Donald Trump'
RETURN n.date, count(*) order by n.date

Search for other People / Locations connected to the same news articles
as Trump with at least 5 total relationship nodes.

MATCH (n:NewsArticle)-[]> (l)

where l.name= 'Donald Trump'
MATCH (n:NewsArticle)-[]> (m)
with m, count(n) as num where num> 5
return labels(m)[0 ], (m.name), num order by num desc limit 10

Chapter 156: Basic Curses with Python

Section 156.1: The wrapper() helper function
While the basic invocation above is easy enough, the curses package
provides the wrapper(func , ...) helper function. The example below
contains the equivalent of above:

main(scr , *args):
# -- Perform an action with Screen -
scr.border(0 )
scr.addstr(5 , 5 , 'Hello from Curses!' , curses .A_BOLD)
scr.addstr(6 , 5 , 'Press q to close this screen' , curses .A_NORMAL)

while True :
# stay in this loop till the user presses 'q'
ch = scr.getch()
if ch == ord ('q' ):

curses .wrapper(main)
Here, wrapper will initialize curses, create stdscr, a WindowObject and
pass both stdscr, and any further arguments to func. When func returns,
wrapper will restore the terminal before the program exits.

Section 156.2: Basic Invocation Example

import curses import traceback

try : # -- Initialize -
stdscr = curses .initscr() curses .noecho()
curses .cbreak()

stdscr.keypad( 1 )

# initialize curses screen

# turn off auto echoing of keypress on to screen # enter break mode where
pressing Enter key
# after keystroke is not required for it to register # enable special Key
values such as curses.KEY_LEFT etc

# -- Perform an action with Screen -

stdscr.border(0 )
stdscr.addstr(5 , 5 , 'Hello from Curses!' , curses .A_BOLD) stdscr.addstr(
5 , 'Press q to close this screen' , curses .A_NORMAL)

while True :
# stay in this loop till the user presses 'q' ch = stdscr.getch()
if ch == ord ('q' ):

break
# -- End of user code -
except :
traceback .print_exc() # print trace back log of the error

finally :
# --- Cleanup on exit -- stdscr.keypad(0 )
curses .echo()
curses .nocbreak()
curses .endwin()

Chapter 157: Templates in python

Section 157.1: Simple data output program using template

from string import Template

data = dict (item = "candy" , price = 8 , qty = 2 )

# define the template

t = Template("Simon bought $qty $item for $price dollar" )
print (t.substitute(data))

Output:
Simon bought 2 candy for 8 dollar
Templates support $-based substitutions instead of %-based
substitution. Substitute (mapping, keywords) performs template
substitution, returning a new string.

Mapping is any dictionary-like object with keys that match with the
template placeholders. In this example, price and qty are placeholders.
Keyword arguments can also be used as placeholders. Placeholders from
keywords take precedence if both are present.

Section 157.2: Changing delimiter

You can change the "$" delimiter to any other. The following example:
from string import Template
class MyOtherTemplate(Template):
delimiter = "#"

data = dict (id = 1 , name = "Ricardo" )

t = MyOtherTemplate("My name is #name and I have the id: #id" )
print (t.substitute(data))

You can read de docs here

Chapter 158: Pillow

Section 158.1: Read Image File

from PIL import Image

im = Image. open ( "Image.bmp" )

Section 158.2: Convert files to JPEG

from __future__ import print_function

import os , sys
from PIL import Image

for infile in sys .argv[1 :]:

f, e = os .path.splitext(infile)
outfile = f + ".jpg"
if infile != outfile:

try :

Image. open (infile).save(outfile)

except IOError :
print ("cannot convert" , infile)

Chapter 159: The pass statement

Section 159.1: Ignore an exception

try :
metadata = metadata['properties' ]
except KeyError :
pass

Section 159.2: Create a new Exception that can be caught

class CompileError( Exception ):

pass

Chapter 160: CLI subcommands with precise help

output
Different ways to create subcommands like in hg or svn with the exact
command line interface and help output as shown in Remarks section.
Parsing Command Line arguments covers broader topic of arguments
parsing.

Section 160.1: Native way (no libraries)

"""
usage: sub <command>
commands:
status - show status
list - print list
"""
import sys
def check():
print ("status" )
return 0

if sys .argv[1 :] == ['status' ]:

sys .exit(check())
elif sys .argv[1 :] == ['list' ]:
print ("list" )
else :
print (__doc__.strip())

Output without arguments:

usage: sub
commands:
status - show status list - print list
Pros:

no deps
everybody should be able to read that complete control over help
formatting

Section 160.2: argparse (default help formatter)

import argparse
import sys

def check():
print ("status" )
return 0

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog = "sub" , add_help = False )

subparser = parser .add_subparsers(dest = "cmd" )
subparser.add_parser( 'status' , help = 'show status' )
subparser.add_parser( 'list' , help = 'print list' )

# hack to show help when no arguments supplied if len (sys .argv) == 1 :

parser .print_help()
sys .exit(0 )
args = parser .parse_args()

if args.cmd == 'list' : print ('list' )

elif args.cmd == 'status' : sys .exit(check())

Output without arguments:

usage: sub {status , list } ...

positional arguments:
{status, list }
status show status list print list

Pros:
comes with Python
option parsing is included

Section 160.3: argparse (custom help formatter)

import argparse
import sys
class CustomHelpFormatter(argparse.HelpFormatter):
def _format_action( self , action):
if type (action) == argparse._SubParsersAction:

# inject new class variable for subcommand formatting

subactions = action._get_subactions()
invocations = [self ._format_action_invocation(a) for a in subactions] self
._subcommand_max_length = max (len (i) for i in invocations)

if type (action) == argparse._SubParsersAction._ChoicesPseudoAction: #

format subcommand help line
subcommand = self ._format_action_invocation(action) # type: str width =
self ._subcommand_max_length
help_text = ""
if action.help :

help_text = self ._expand_help(action)

return " {:{width}} - {} \n " .format(subcommand , help_text , width = width)
elif type (action) == argparse._SubParsersAction: # process subcommand
help section
msg = ' \n '
for subaction in action._get_subactions():

msg + = self ._format_action(subaction) return msg

else :
return super (CustomHelpFormatter , self )._format_action(action)

def check():
print ("status" ) return 0

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(usage = "sub <command>" , add_help

False , formatter_class = CustomHelpFormatter)

subparser = parser .add_subparsers(dest= "cmd" )

subparser.add_parser('status' , help = 'show status' )
subparser.add_parser('list' , help = 'print list' )

# custom help message

parser ._positionals.title = "commands"

# hack to show help when no arguments supplied if len (sys .argv) == 1 :

parser .print_help()
sys .exit(0 )

args = parser .parse_args()

if args.cmd == 'list' : print ('list' )

elif args.cmd == 'status' : sys .exit(check())

Output without arguments:

usage: sub < command >
commands :
status - show status list - print list

Chapter 161: Database Access

Section 161.1: SQLite

SQLite is a lightweight, disk-based database. Since it does not require a

separate database server, it is often used for prototyping or for small
applications that are often used by a single user or by one user at a given
time.
import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3.connect( "users.db" )
c = conn.cursor()
c.execute( "CREATE TABLE user (name text, age integer)" )
c.execute( "INSERT INTO user VALUES ('User A', 42)" )
c.execute( "INSERT INTO user VALUES ('User B', 43)" )
conn.commit()
c.execute( "SELECT * FROM user" )
print (c.fetchall())
conn.close()
The code above connects to the database stored in the file named
users.db, creating the file first if it doesn't already exist. You can interact
with the database via SQL statements.
The result of this example should be:
[(u 'User A' , 42 ) , (u 'User B' , 43 )]
The SQLite Syntax: An in-depth analysis Getting started
1. Import the sqlite module using
>>> import sqlite3
2. To use the module, you must first create a Connection object that
represents the database. Here the data will be stored in the example.db
file:
>>> conn = sqlite3.connect( 'users.db' )
Alternatively, you can also supply the special name :memory: to create a
temporary database in RAM, as follows:
>>> conn = sqlite3.connect( ':memory:' )
3. Once you have a Connection, you can create a Cursor object and call
its execute() method to perform SQL commands:
c = conn.cursor()
# Create table
c.execute( '''CREATE TABLE stocks
(date text, trans text, symbol text, qty real, price real)''' )
# Insert a row of data
c.execute( "INSERT INTO stocks VALUES ('2006-01-
05','BUY','RHAT',100,35.14)" )
# Save (commit) the changes conn.commit()

# We can also close the connection if we are done with it. # Just be sure
any changes have been committed or they will be lost. conn.close()

Important Attributes and Functions of Connection

1. isolation_level
It is an attribute used to get or set the current isolation level. None for
autocommit mode or one of DEFERRED, IMMEDIATE or
EXCLUSIVE.
2. cursor
The cursor object is used to execute SQL commands and queries.
3. commit()
Commits the current transaction.
4. rollback()
Rolls back any changes made since the previous call to commit()
5. close()
Closes the database connection. It does not call commit() automatically.
If close() is called without first calling commit() (assuming you are not in
autocommit mode) then all changes made will be lost.
6. total_changes
An attribute that logs the total number of rows modified, deleted or
inserted since the database was opened.
7. execute, executemany, and executescript

These functions perform the same way as those of the cursor object. This
is a shortcut since calling these functions through the connection object
results in the creation of an intermediate cursor object and calls the
corresponding method of the cursor object

8. row_factory
You can change this attribute to a callable that accepts the cursor and
the original row as a tuple and will return the real result row.

def dict_factory(cursor, row):

d = {}
for i, col in enumerate (cursor.description):

d[col[ 0 ]] = row[i]
return d
conn = sqlite3.connect( ":memory:" ) conn.row_factory = dict_factory
Important Functions of Cursor
1. execute(sql[ , parameters])

Executes a single SQL statement. The SQL statement may be

parametrized (i. e. placeholders instead of SQL literals). The sqlite3
module supports two kinds of placeholders: question marks ? (“qmark
style”) and named placeholders :name (“named style”).

import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3. connect( ":memory:" )
cur = conn. cursor()
cur. execute( "create table people (name, age)" )

who = "Sophia"
age = 37
# This IS the qmark STYLE :
cur. execute( "insert into people values (?, ?)" ,

( who , age ))
# AND this IS the named STYLE :
cur . execute ( "select * from people where name=:who and age=:age" ,
{ "who" : who , "age" : age }) # the KEYS correspond TO the placeholders
SQL
print ( cur . fetchone ())
Beware: don't use %s for inserting strings into SQL commands as it can
make your program vulnerable to an SQL injection attack (see SQL
Injection ).
2. executemany(sql , seq_of_parameters)
Executes an SQL command against all parameter sequences or
mappings found in the sequence sql. The sqlite3 module also allows using
an iterator yielding parameters instead of a sequence.
L = [( 1 , 'abcd' , 'dfj' , 300 ) , # A list OF tuples TO be inserted INTO the
DATABASE ( 2 , 'cfgd' , 'dyfj' , 400 ) ,
( 3 , 'sdd' , 'dfjh' , 300.50 )]

conn = sqlite3. connect( "test1.db" )

conn. execute( "create table if not exists book (id int, name text, author
text, price real)" ) conn. executemany( "insert into book values (?, ?, ?,
?)" , L)

FOR ROW IN conn . execute ( "select * from book" ) : print ( ROW )

You can also pass iterator objects as a parameter to executemany, and
the function will iterate over the each tuple of values that the iterator
returns. The iterator must return a tuple of values.
import sqlite3
class IterChars:
def __init__ ( SELF ) :
SELF . count = ord ( 'a' )
def __iter__ ( SELF ) : RETURN SELF
def __next__ ( SELF ) : # ( USE NEXT ( SELF ) FOR Python 2 )

IF SELF . count > ord( 'z' ) :

raise StopIteration
SELF . count += 1
RETURN ( chr( SELF . count - 1 ) , )

conn = sqlite3. connect( "abc.db" )

cur = conn. cursor()
cur. execute( "create table characters(c)" )

theIter = IterChars ()
cur . executemany ( "insert into characters(c) values (?)" , theIter )
ROWS = cur . execute ( "select c from characters" ) FOR ROW IN ROWS
print ( ROW [ 0 ]) ,
3. executescript(sql_script)
This is a nonstandard convenience method for executing multiple SQL
statements at once. It issues a COMMIT statement first, then executes
the SQL script it gets as a parameter.
sql_script can be an instance of str or bytes .
import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3. connect( ":memory:" ) cur = conn. cursor()
cur. executescript( """

create table person(

firstname,
lastname,
age

);

create table book( title,

author,
published

);

insert into book(title, author, published) values (

'Dirk Gently''s Holistic Detective Agency',
'Douglas Adams',
1987
);
""" )

The next set of functions are used in conjunction with SELECT

statements in SQL. To retrieve data after executing a SELECT
statement, you can either treat the cursor as an iterator, call the cursor’s
fetchone() method to retrieve a single matching row, or call fetchall() to
get a list of the matching rows.

Example of the iterator form:

import sqlite3
stocks = [( '2006-01-05' , 'BUY' , 'RHAT' , 100 , 35.14 ) ,
( '2006-03-28' , 'BUY' , 'IBM' , 1000 , 45.0 ) ,
( '2006-04-06' , 'SELL' , 'IBM' , 500 , 53.0 ) ,
( '2006-04-05' , 'BUY' , 'MSFT' , 1000 , 72.0 )]
conn = sqlite3. connect( ":memory:" )
conn. execute( "create table stocks (date text, buysell text, symb text,
amount int, price real)" )
conn. executemany( "insert into stocks values (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)" , stocks)
cur = conn. cursor()

FOR ROW IN cur . execute ( 'SELECT * FROM stocks ORDER BY price'

: print ( ROW )

# Output:
# ( '2006-01-05' , 'BUY' , 'RHAT' , 100 , 35.14 ) # ( '2006-03-28' , 'BUY' , 'IBM'
1000 , 45.0 ) # ( '2006-04-06' , 'SELL' , 'IBM' , 500 , 53.0 ) # ( '2006-04-05'
'MSFT' , 1000 , 72.0 )

4. fetchone()
Fetches the next row of a query result set, returning a single sequence, or
None when no more data is available.

cur.execute( 'SELECT * FROM stocks ORDER BY price' ) i =

cur.fetchone()
while (i):

print (i)
i = cur.fetchone()

# Output:
# ('2006-01-05', 'BUY', 'RHAT', 100, 35.14) # ('2006-03-28', 'BUY', 'IBM',
1000, 45.0) # ('2006-04-06', 'SELL', 'IBM', 500, 53.0) # ('2006-04-05',
'BUY', 'MSFT', 1000, 72.0)

5. fetchmany(size = cursor.arraysize)
Fetches the next set of rows of a query result (specified by size),
returning a list. If size is omitted, fetchmany returns a single row. An
empty list is returned when no more rows are available.
cur.execute( 'SELECT * FROM stocks ORDER BY price' ) print
(cur.fetchmany( 2 ))
# Output:
# [('2006-01-05', 'BUY', 'RHAT', 100, 35.14), ('2006-03-28', 'BUY', 'IBM',
1000, 45.0)]
6. fetchall()
Fetches all (remaining) rows of a query result, returning a list.
cur.execute( 'SELECT * FROM stocks ORDER BY price' ) print
(cur.fetchall())

# Output:
# [('2006-01-05', 'BUY', 'RHAT', 100, 35.14), ('2006-03-28', 'BUY', 'IBM',
1000, 45.0), ('2006-04-06', 'SELL', 'IBM', 500, 53.0), ('2006-04-05', 'BUY',
'MSFT', 1000, 72.0)]

SQLite and Python data types

SQLite natively supports the following types: NULL, INTEGER, REAL,
TEXT, BLOB.
This is how the data types are converted when moving from SQL to
Python or vice versa.

None < -> NULL

int < -> INTEGER/INT float < -> REAL/FLOAT str < ->
TEXT/VARCHAR(n) bytes < -> BLOB

Section 161.2: Accessing MySQL database using MySQLdb

The first thing you need to do is create a connection to the database
using the connect method. After that, you will need a cursor that will
operate with that connection.
Use the execute method of the cursor to interact with the database, and
every once in a while, commit the changes using the commit method of
the connection object.
Once everything is done, don't forget to close the cursor and the
connection.
Here is a Dbconnect class with everything you'll need.
import MySQLdb
class Dbconnect( object ):
def __init__ ( self ):

self .dbconection = MySQLdb.connect(host= 'host_example' ,

port= int ('port_example' ),
user = 'user_example' ,
passwd= 'pass_example' ,
db= 'schema_example' )

self .dbcursor = self .dbconection.cursor()

def commit_db( self ):
self .dbconection.commit()

def close_db(self ):
self .dbcursor.close()
self .dbconection.close()

Interacting with the database is simple. After creating the object, just use
the execute method.
db = Dbconnect()
db.dbcursor.execute( 'SELECT * FROM %s' % 'table_example' )
If you want to call a stored procedure, use the following syntax. Note that
the parameters list is optional.
db = Dbconnect()
db.callproc( 'stored_procedure_name' , [parameters] )
After the query is done, you can access the results multiple ways. The
cursor object is a generator that can fetch all the results or be looped.
results = db.dbcursor.fetchall() for individual_row in results: first_field =
individual_row[ 0 ] If you want a loop using directly the generator:
for individual_row in db.dbcursor: first_field = individual_row[ 0 ]
If you want to commit changes to the database:
db.commit_db()
If you want to close the cursor and the connection: db.close_db()

Section 161.3: Connection

Creating a connection

According to PEP 249, the connection to a database should be

established using a connect() constructor, which returns a Connection
object. The arguments for this constructor are database dependent.
Refer to the database specific topics for the relevant arguments.
import MyDBAPI
con = MyDBAPI.connect(*database_dependent_args)
This connection object has four methods:
1: close
con.close()
Closes the connection instantly. Note that the connection is automatically
closed if the Connection.__del___ method is called. Any pending
transactions will implicitly be rolled back.
2: commit
con.commit()
Commits any pending transaction to the database.
3: rollback
con.rollback()
Rolls back to the start of any pending transaction. In other words: this
cancels any non-committed transaction to the database.
4: cursor
cur = con.cursor() Returns a Cursor object. This is used to do transactions
on the database.

Section 161.4: PostgreSQL Database access using psycopg2

psycopg2 is the most popular PostgreSQL database adapter that is both
lightweight and efficient. It is the current implementation of the
PostgreSQL adapter.
Its main features are the complete implementation of the Python DB API
2.0 specification and the thread safety (several threads can share the
same connection)
Establishing a connection to the database and creating a table import
psycopg2

# Establish a connection to the database.

# Replace parameter values with database credentials. conn =
psycopg2.connect(database= "testpython" ,

user = "postgres" ,
host= "localhost" ,
password= "abc123" , port= "5432" )
# Create a cursor. The cursor allows you to execute database queries. cur =
conn.cursor()

# Create a table. Initialise the table name, the column names and data type.
cur.execute("""CREATE TABLE FRUITS (
id INT ,
fruit_name TEXT,
color TEXT,
price REAL )""" ) conn.commit()
conn.close()

Inserting data into the table:

# After creating the table as shown above, insert values into it. cur.execute(
"""INSERT INTO FRUITS (id, fruit_name, color, price) VALUES (1,
'Apples', 'green', 1.00)""" )
cur.execute( """INSERT INTO FRUITS (id, fruit_name, color, price)
VALUES (1, 'Bananas', 'yellow', 0.80)""" )
Retrieving table data:
# Set up a query and execute it
cur.execute( """SELECT id, fruit_name, color, price FROM fruits""" )
# Fetch the data
rows = cur.fetchall()

# Do stuff with the data

for row in rows:
print "ID = {} " .format(row[0 ])
print "FRUIT NAME = {}" .format(row[1 ])
print ("COLOR = {}" .format(row[2 ]))
print ("PRICE = {}" .format(row[3 ]))

The output of the above would be:

ID = 1
NAME = Apples COLOR = green PRICE = 1.0

ID = 2
NAME = Bananas COLOR = yellow PRICE = 0.8
And so, there you go, you now know half of all you need to know about
psycopg2 ! :)

Section 161.5: Oracle database

Pre-requisites:
cx_Oracle package - See here for all versions Oracle instant client - For
Windows x64 , Linux x64
Setup:
Install the cx_Oracle package as:
sudo rpm -i <YOUR_PACKAGE_FILENAME>
Extract the Oracle instant client and set environment variables as:

ORACLE_HOME =< PATH_TO_INSTANTCLIENT>

PATH= $ORACLE_HOME:$PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=< PATH_TO_INSTANTCLIENT>
:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Creating a connection:
import cx_Oracle

class OraExec(object ): _db_connection = None _db_cur = None

def __init__ ( self ):

self ._db_connection =
cx_Oracle.connect('<USERNAME>/<PASSWORD>@<HOSTNAME>:
<PORT>/<SERVICE_NAME>' )
self ._db_cur = self ._db_connection.cursor()

Get database version:

ver = con.version.split( "." ) print ver
Sample Output: ['12', '1', '0', '2', '0']
Execute query: SELECT
_db_cur.execute( "select * from employees order by emp_id" ) for result in
_db_cur:
print result
Output will be in Python tuples:
(10, 'SYSADMIN', 'IT-INFRA', 7)
(23, 'HR ASSOCIATE', 'HUMAN RESOURCES', 6)
Execute query: INSERT

_db_cur.execute( "insert into employees(emp_id, title, dept, grade)

values (31, 'MTS', 'ENGINEERING', 7)
_db_connection.commit()

When you perform insert/update/delete operations in an Oracle

Database, the changes are only available within your session until
commit is issued. When the updated data is committed to the database, it
is then available to other users and sessions.

Execute query: INSERT using Bind variables

Reference
Bind variables enable you to re-execute statements with new values,
without the overhead of re-parsing the statement. Bind variables
improve code re-usability, and can reduce the risk of SQL Injection
attacks.

rows = [ (1 , "First" ),
(2 , "Second" ),
(3 , "Third" ) ]

_db_cur.bindarraysize = 3
_db_cur.setinputsizes(int , 10 )
_db_cur.executemany("insert into mytab(id, data) values (:1, :2)" , rows)
_db_connection.commit()

Close connection:
_db_connection.close()
The close() method closes the connection. Any connections not explicitly
closed will be automatically released when the script ends.

Section 161.6: Using sqlalchemy

To use sqlalchemy for database:
from sqlalchemy import create_engine
from sqlalchemy.engine.url import URL

url = URL(drivername= 'mysql' , username= 'user' , password= 'passwd'

host= 'host' ,
database= 'db' )

engine = create_engine(url) # sqlalchemy engine

Now this engine can be used: e.g. with pandas to fetch dataframes
directly from mysql
import pandas as pd
con = engine.connect()
dataframe = pd.read_sql(sql = query , con = con)

Chapter 162: Connecting Python to SQL Server

Section 162.1: Connect to Server, Create Table, Query Data

Install the package:

$ pip install pymssql
import pymssql

SERVER = "servername"
USER = "username"
PASSWORD = "password"
DATABASE = "dbname"

connection = pymssql.connect(server = SERVER , user = USER ,

password = PASSWORD , database = DATABASE)

cursor = connection.cursor() # to access field as dictionary use

cursor(as_dict=True) cursor.execute("SELECT TOP 1 * FROM
TableName" )
row = cursor.fetchone()

######## CREATE TABLE ########

cursor.execute("""
CREATE TABLE posts (
post_id INT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
message TEXT,
publish_date DATETIME

)
""" )
######## INSERT DATA IN TABLE ########
cursor.execute( """

INSERT INTO posts VALUES(1, "Hey There", "11.23.2016")

""" )
# commit your work to database
connection.commit()

######## ITERATE THROUGH RESULTS ########

cursor.execute("SELECT TOP 10 * FROM posts ORDER BY
publish_date DESC" )
for row in cursor:

print ("Message: " + row[1 ] + " | " + "Date: " + row[2 ])

# if you pass as_dict=True to cursor
# print(row["message"])

connection.close()
You can do anything if your work is related with SQL expressions, just
pass this expressions to the execute method(CRUD operations).
For with statement, calling stored procedure, error handling or more
example check: pymssql.org

Chapter 163: PostgreSQL

Section 163.1: Getting Started

PostgreSQL is an actively developed and mature open source database.

Using the psycopg2 module, we can execute queries on the database.
Installation using pip
pip install psycopg2
Basic usage
Let's assume we have a table my_table in the database my_database
defined as follows.
id first_name last_name
1 John Doe
We can use the psycopg2 module to run queries on the database in the
following fashion.
import psycopg2

# Establish a connection to the existing database 'my_database' using

# the user 'my_user' with password 'my_password'
con = psycopg2.connect("host=localhost dbname=my_database
user=my_user password=my_password" )

# Create a cursor
cur = con.cursor()
# Insert a record into 'my_table'
cur.execute( "INSERT INTO my_table(id, first_name, last_name)
VALUES (2, 'Jane', 'Doe');" )
# Commit the current transaction
con.commit()

# Retrieve all records from 'my_table'

cur.execute("SELECT * FROM my_table;" )
results = cur.fetchall()

# Close the database connection

con.close()
# Print the results
print (results)
# OUTPUT: [(1, 'John', 'Doe'), (2, 'Jane', 'Doe')]

Chapter 164: Python and Excel

Section 164.1: Read the excel data using xlrd module

Python xlrd library is to extract data from Microsoft Excel (tm)

spreadsheet files.
Installation:
pip install xlrd
Or you can use setup.py file from pypi
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlrd
Reading an excel sheet: Import xlrd module and open excel file using
open_workbook() method.
import xlrd
book = xlrd.open_workbook( 'sample.xlsx' )
Check number of sheets in the excel
print book.nsheets
Print the sheet names
print book.sheet_names()
Get the sheet based on index
sheet = book.sheet_by_index( 1 )
Read the contents of a cell
cell = sheet.cell(row , col) #where row=row number and col=column number
print cell.value #to print the cell contents
Get number of rows and number of columns in an excel sheet
num_rows = sheet.nrows
num_col = sheet.ncols
Get excel sheet by name
sheets = book.sheet_names()
cur_sheet = book.sheet_by_name(sheets[ 0 ])

Section 164.2: Format Excel files with xlsxwriter

import xlsxwriter
# create a new file
workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook( 'your_file.xlsx' )
# add some new formats to be used by the workbook

percent_format = workbook.add_format({'num_format' : '0%' })

percent_with_decimal = workbook.add_format({'num_format' : '0.0%'
}) bold = workbook.add_format({'bold' : True })
red_font = workbook.add_format({'font_color' : 'red' }) remove_format
= workbook.add_format()
# add a new sheet
worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()
# set the width of column A worksheet.set_column( 'A:A' , 30 , )
# set column B to 20 and include the percent format we created earlier
worksheet.set_column( 'B:B' , 20 , percent_format)
# remove formatting from the first row (change in height=None)
worksheet.set_row( '0:0' , None , remove_format)
workbook.close()

Section 164.3: Put list data into a Excel's file

import os , sys
from openpyxl import Workbook
from datetime import datetime

dt = datetime .now()
list_values = [["01/01/2016" , "05:00:00" , 3 ], \
["01/02/2016" , "06:00:00" , 4 ], \
["01/03/2016" , "07:00:00" , 5 ], \
["01/04/2016" , "08:00:00" , 6 ], \
["01/05/2016" , "09:00:00" , 7 ]]

# Create a Workbook on Excel: wb = Workbook()

sheet = wb.active
sheet.title = 'data'

# Print the titles into Excel Workbook: row = 1

sheet['A' +str (row)] = 'Date'
sheet['B' +str (row)] = 'Hour'
sheet['C' +str (row)] = 'Value'

# Populate with data

for item in list_values:
row += 1
sheet['A' +str (row)] = item[0 ]
sheet['B' +str (row)] = item[1 ]
sheet['C' +str (row)] = item[2 ]
# Save a file by date:
filename = 'data_' + dt.strftime("%Y%m%d_%I%M%S" ) + '.xlsx'
wb.save(filename)

# Open the file for the user:

os .chdir(sys .path[0 ])
os .system('start excel.exe "%s \\ %s"' % (sys .path[0 ], filename, ))

Section 164.4: OpenPyXL

OpenPyXL is a module for manipulating and creating xlsx/xlsm/xltx/xltm

workbooks in memory.
Manipulating and reading an existing workbook:

import openpyxl as opx

#To change an existing workbook we located it by referencing its path
workbook = opx.load_workbook(workbook_path)

load_workbook() contains the parameter read_only, setting this to True

will load the workbook as read_only, this is helpful when reading larger
xlsx files:
workbook = opx.load_workbook(workbook_path , read_only = True )
Once you have loaded the workbook into memory, you can access the
individual sheets using workbook.sheets
first_sheet = workbook.worksheets[ 0 ]
If you want to specify the name of an available sheets, you can use
workbook.get_sheet_names().
sheet = workbook.get_sheet_by_name( 'Sheet Name' )
Finally, the rows of the sheet can be accessed using sheet.rows. To iterate
over the rows in a sheet, use:
for row in sheet.rows: print row[ 0 ].value
Since each row in rows is a list of Cells, use Cell.value to get the contents
of the Cell.
Creating a new Workbook in memory:
#Calling the Workbook() function creates a new book in memory wb =
opx.Workbook()
#We can then create a new sheet in the wb
ws = wb.create_sheet( 'Sheet Name' , 0 ) #0 refers to the index of the sheet
order in the wb
Several tab properties may be changed through openpyxl, for example
the tabColor:
ws.sheet_properties.tabColor = 'FFC0CB'
To save our created workbook we finish with: wb.save( 'filename.xlsx' )

Section 164.5: Create excel charts with xlsxwriter

import xlsxwriter

# sample data
chart_data = [
{'name' : 'Lorem' , 'value' : 23 },
{'name' : 'Ipsum' , 'value' : 48 },
{'name' : 'Dolor' , 'value' : 15 },
{'name' : 'Sit' , 'value' : 8 },
{'name' : 'Amet' , 'value' : 32 } ]

# excel file path

xls_file = 'chart.xlsx'
# the workbook
workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook(xls_file)
# add worksheet to workbook
worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()
row_ = 0 col_ = 0

# write headers
worksheet.write(row_, col_, 'NAME' ) col_ += 1
worksheet.write(row_, col_, 'VALUE' ) row_ += 1

# write sample data

for item in chart_data:
col_ = 0
worksheet.write(row_, col_, item['name' ])
col_ += 1
worksheet.write(row_, col_, item['value' ])
row_ += 1

# create pie chart

pie_chart = workbook.add_chart({ 'type' : 'pie' })

# add series to pie chart

pie_chart.add_series({
'name' : 'Series Name' ,
'categories' : '=Sheet1!$A$3:$A$%s' % row_,
'values' : '=Sheet1!$B$3:$B$%s' % row_,
'marker' : {'type' : 'circle' }
})
# insert pie chart
worksheet.insert_chart('D2' , pie_chart)

# create column chart

column_chart = workbook.add_chart({ 'type' : 'column' })

# add serie to column chart

column_chart.add_series({
'name' : 'Series Name' ,
'categories' : '=Sheet1!$A$3:$A$%s' % row_,
'values' : '=Sheet1!$B$3:$B$%s' % row_,
'marker' : {'type' : 'circle' }
})
# insert column chart
worksheet.insert_chart('D20' , column_chart)

workbook.close() Result:
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Chapter 165: Turtle Graphics
Section 165.1: Ninja Twist (Turtle Graphics)

Here a Turtle
Graphics Ninja Twist:
import turtle
ninja = turtle .Turtle()
ninja.speed( 10 )

for i in range (180 ):

ninja.forward(100 )
ninja.right(30 )
ninja.forward(20 )
ninja.left(60 )
ninja.forward(50 )
ninja.right(30 )

ninja.penup()
ninja.setposition(0 , 0 )
ninja.pendown()

ninja.right( 2 )
turtle .done()

Chapter 166: Python Persistence

Parameter obj
protocol
file

Details
pickled representation of obj to the open file object file
an integer, tells the pickler to use the given protocol,0-ASCII, 1- old
binary format
The file argument must have a write() method wb for dump method and
for loading read() method rb

Section 166.1: Python Persistence

Objects like numbers, lists, dictionaries,nested structures and class
instance objects live in your computer’s memory and are lost as soon as
the script ends.
pickle stores data persistently in separate file.
pickled representation of an object is always a bytes object in all cases so
one must open files in wb to store data and rb to load data from pickle.
the data may be of any kind, for example,
data = {'a' :'some_value' ,
'b' :[9 , 4 , 7 ],
'c' :['some_str' , 'another_str' , 'spam' , 'ham' ],
'd' :{'key' :'nested_dictionary' },
}

Store data

import pickle
file = open ('filename' , 'wb' ) #file object in binary write mode pickle
.dump(data, file ) #dump the data in the file object file .close() #close the file
to write into the file

Load data

import pickle
file = open ('filename' , 'rb' ) #file object in binary read mode data= pickle
.load(file ) #load the data back
file .close()

>>> data
{ 'b' : [ 9 , 4 , 7 ] , 'a' : 'some_value' , 'd' : { 'key' : 'nested_dictionary' } , 'c'
'some_str' , 'another_str' , 'spam' , 'ham' ]}
The following types can be pickled

1. None, True, and False

2. integers, floating point numbers, complex numbers
3. strings, bytes, bytearrays
4. tuples, lists, sets, and dictionaries containing only picklable objects
5. functions defined at the top level of a module (using def, not lambda)
6. built-in functions defined at the top level of a module
7. classes that are defined at the top level of a module
8. instances of such classes whose dict or the result of calling getstate()

Section 166.2: Function utility for save and load

Save data to and from file
import pickle
def save(filename, object ):
file = open (filename, 'wb' )
pickle .dump(object , file )
file .close()

def load(filename):
file = open (filename, 'rb' )
object = pickle .load(file )
file .close()
return object

>>> list_object= [1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 8 , 'a' , 'e' , 'i' , 'o' , 'u' ] >>> save(list_file,

list_object)
>>> new_list= load(list_file)
>>> new_list
[1 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 8 , 'a' , 'e' , 'i' , 'o' , 'u'

Chapter 167: Design Patterns

A design pattern is a general solution to a commonly occurring problem
in software development. This documentation topic is specifically aimed
at providing examples of common design patterns in Python.

Section 167.1: Introduction to design patterns and Singleton

Pattern

Design Patterns provide solutions to the commonly occurring problems

in software design. The design patterns were first introduced by
GoF(Gang of Four) where they described the common patterns as
problems which occur over and over again and solutions to those
problems.

Design patterns have four essential elements:

1. The pattern name is a handle we can use to describe a design problem,

its solutions, and consequences in a word or two.
2. The problem describes when to apply the pattern.
3. The solution describes the elements that make up the design, their
relationships, responsibilities, and collaborations.
4. The consequences are the results and trade-offs of applying the
pattern.

Advantages of design patterns:

1. They are reusable across multiple projects.

2. The architectural level of problems can be solved
3. They are time-tested and well-proven, which is the experience of
developers and architects
4. They have reliability and dependence

Design patterns can be classified into three categories:

1. Creational Pattern
2. Structural Pattern
3. Behavioral Pattern

Creational Pattern - They are concerned with how the object can be
created and they isolate the details of object creation.
Structural Pattern - They design the structure of classes and objects so
that they can compose to achieve larger results.
Behavioral Pattern - They are concerned with interaction among objects
and responsibility of objects.
Singleton Pattern:
It is a type of creational pattern which provides a mechanism to have
only one and one object of a given type and provides a global point of
access.
e.g. Singleton can be used in database operations, where we want
database object to maintain data consistency.
Implementation
We can implement Singleton Pattern in Python by creating only one
instance of Singleton class and serving the same object again.

class Singleton(object ):
def __new__ (cls):
# hasattr method checks if the class object an instance property or not. if
not hasattr (cls, 'instance' ):

cls.instance = super (Singleton , cls). __new__ (cls)

return cls.instance
s = Singleton()
print ( "Object created" , s)
s1 = Singleton()
print ( "Object2 created" , s1)
Output:
( 'Object created' , < __main__ .Singleton object at 0x10a7cc310 > ) ( 'Object2
created' , < __main__ .Singleton object at 0x10a7cc310 > )

Note that in languages like C++ or Java, this pattern is implemented by

making the constructor private and creating a static method that does
the object initialization. This way, one object gets created on the first call
and class returns the same object thereafter. But in Python, we do not
have any way to create private constructors.

Factory Pattern

Factory pattern is also a Creational pattern. The term factory means

that a class is responsible for creating objects of other types. There is a
class that acts as a factory which has objects and methods associated
with it. The client creates an object by calling the methods with certain
parameters and factory creates the object of the desired type and return
it to the client.

from abc import ABCMeta , abstractmethod

class Music():
__metaclass__ = ABCMeta @ abstractmethod
def do_play(self ):

pass
class Mp3(Music):
def do_play( self ):
print ( "Playing .mp3 music!" ) class Ogg(Music):
def do_play( self ):
print ( "Playing .ogg music!" ) class MusicFactory( object ):
def play_sound( self , object_type): return eval (object_type)().do_play()

if __name__ == "__main__" :
mf = MusicFactory()
music = input ("Which music you want to play Mp3 or Ogg" )
mf.play_sound(music)

Output:
Which music you want to play Mp3 or Ogg"Ogg" Playing .ogg music!
MusicFactory is the factory class here that creates either an object of
type Mp3 or Ogg depending on the choice user provides.

Section 167.2: Strategy Pattern

This design pattern is called Strategy Pattern. It is used to define a
family of algorithms, encapsulates each one, and make them
interchangeable. Strategy design pattern lets an algorithm vary
independently from clients that use it.
For example, animals can "walk" in many different ways. Walking could
be considered a strategy that is implemented by different types of
animals:
from types import MethodType
class Animal( object ):

def __init__ (self , *args, **kwargs):

self .name = kwargs.pop('name' , None ) or 'Animal' if kwargs.get('walk' ,
None ):

self .walk = MethodType(kwargs.pop( 'walk' ) , self )

def walk(self ):
"""
Cause animal instance to walk

Walking functionality is a strategy, and is intended to be implemented

separately by different types of animals. """
message = '{} should implement a walk method' .format(

self .__class__.__name__)
raise NotImplementedError (message)
# Here are some different walking algorithms that can be used with Animal
def snake_walk( self ):
print ( 'I am slithering side to side because I am a {}.' .format( self .name))
def four_legged_animal_walk( self ):
print ( 'I am using all four of my legs to walk because I am a(n) {}.'
.format( self .name))
def two_legged_animal_walk( self ):
print ( 'I am standing up on my two legs to walk because I am a {}.'
.format( self .name))
Running this example would produce the following output:

generic_animal = Animal()
king_cobra = Animal(name= 'King Cobra' , walk= snake_walk) elephant
= Animal(name= 'Elephant' , walk= four_legged_animal_walk) kangaroo
= Animal(name= 'Kangaroo' , walk= two_legged_animal_walk)

kangaroo.walk()
elephant.walk()
king_cobra.walk()
# This one will Raise a NotImplementedError to let the programmer #
know that the walk method is intended to be used as a strategy.
generic_animal.walk()

# OUTPUT:
#
# I am standing up on my two legs to walk because I am a Kangaroo. # I
am using all four of my legs to walk because I am a(n) Elephant. # I am
slithering side to side because I am a King Cobra. # Traceback (most recent
call last):
# File "./strategy.py", line 56, in <module>
# generic_animal.walk()
# File "./strategy.py", line 30, in walk
# raise NotImplementedError(message)
# NotImplementedError: Animal should implement a walk method
Note that in languages like C++ or Java, this pattern is implemented
using an abstract class or an interface to define a strategy. In Python it
makes more sense to just define some functions externally that can be
added dynamically to a class using types .MethodType.

Section 167.3: Proxy

Proxy object is often used to ensure guarded access to another object,
which internal business logic we don't want to pollute with safety
requirements.
Suppose we'd like to guarantee that only user of specific permissions can
access resource.
Proxy definition: (it ensure that only users which actually can see
reservations will be able to consumer reservation_service)
from datetime import date
from operator import attrgetter

class Proxy:
def __init__ (self , current_user, reservation_service):
self .current_user = current_user
self .reservation_service = reservation_service

def highest_total_price_reservations( self , date_from , date_to ,

reservations_count): if self .current_user.can_see_reservations:
return self .reservation_service.highest_total_price_reservations(

date_from ,
date_to,
reservations_count

)
else :
return []
#Models and ReservationService:

class Reservation:
def __init__ (self , date, total_price): self .date = date
self .total_price = total_price
class ReservationService:
def highest_total_price_reservations(self , date_from, date_to,
reservations_count): # normally it would be read from database/external
service
reservations = [

Reservation(date( 2014 , 5 , 15 ), 100 ),

Reservation(date(2017 , 5 , 15 ), 10 ),
Reservation(date(2017 , 1 , 15 ), 50 )

]
filtered_reservations = [r for r in reservations if (date_from <= r.date <=
date_to)]
sorted_reservations = sorted (filtered_reservations , key = attrgetter(
'total_price' ) , reverse = True )
return sorted_reservations[ 0 :reservations_count]

class User:
def __init__ (self , can_see_reservations, name): self .can_see_reservations
= can_see_reservations self .name = name

#Consumer service:
class StatsService:
def __init__ ( self , reservation_service): self .reservation_service =
reservation_service

def year_top_100_reservations_average_total_price(self , year):

reservations = self .reservation_service.highest_total_price_reservations(
date(year, 1 , 1 ),
date(year, 12 , 31 ),
1

)
if len (reservations) > 0 :
total = sum (r.total_price for r in reservations)

return total / len (reservations) else :

return 0
#Test:
def test (user , year):
reservations_service = Proxy(user , ReservationService())
stats_service = StatsService(reservations_service)
average_price =
stats_service.year_top_100_reservations_average_total_price(year)
print ("{0} will see: {1}" .format(user .name, average_price))

test (User( True , "John the Admin" ) , 2017 ) test (User( False , "Guest" )
BENEFITS

we're avoiding any changes in ReservationService when access

restrictions are changed. we're not mixing business related data
(date_from, date_to, reservations_count) with domain unrelated
concepts (user permissions) in service.
Consumer (StatsService) is free from permissions related logic as well

CAVEATS
Proxy interface is always exactly the same as the object it hides, so that
user that consumes service wrapped by proxy wasn't even aware of
proxy presence.

Chapter 168: hashlib

hashlib implements a common interface to many different secure hash
and message digest algorithms. Included are the FIPS secure hash
algorithms SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512.

Section 168.1: MD5 hash of a string

This module implements a common interface to many different secure

hash and message digest algorithms. Included are the FIPS secure hash
algorithms SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512 (defined in
FIPS 180-2) as well as RSA’s MD5 algorithm (defined in Internet RFC
1321).

There is one constructor method named for each type of hash. All return
a hash object with the same simple interface. For example: use sha1() to
create a SHA1 hash object.
hash .sha1()
Constructors for hash algorithms that are always present in this module
are md5 (), sha1(), sha224(), sha256(), sha384(), and sha512().
You can now feed this object with arbitrary strings using the update()
method. At any point you can ask it for the digest of the concatenation of
the strings fed to it so far using the digest() or hexdigest() methods.
hash .update(arg)
Update the hash object with the string arg. Repeated calls are equivalent
to a single call with the concatenation of all the arguments: m.update(a);
m.update(b) is equivalent to m.update(a+b).
hash .digest()
Return the digest of the strings passed to the update() method so far.
This is a string of digest_size bytes which may contain non-ASCII
characters, including null bytes.
hash .hexdigest()
Like digest() except the digest is returned as a string of double length,
containing only hexadecimal digits. This may be used to exchange the
value safely in email or other non-binary environments.
Here is an example:

>>> import hashlib

>>> m = hashlib.md5 ()
>>> m.update("Nobody inspects" )
>>> m.update(" the spammish repetition" )
>>> m.digest()
' \x bbd \x 9c \x 83 \x dd \x 1e \x a5 \x c9 \x d9 \x de \x c9 \x a1 \x 8d \x f0 \x
m.hexdigest()
'bb649c83dd1ea5c9d9dec9a18df0ffe9'
>>> m.digest_size
16

>>> m.block_size 64
or:
hashlib. md5 ( "Nobody inspects the spammish repetition" ).hexdigest()
'bb649c83dd1ea5c9d9dec9a18df0ffe9'
Section 168.2: algorithm provided by OpenSSL

A generic new () constructor that takes the string name of the desired
algorithm as its first parameter also exists to allow access to the above
listed hashes as well as any other algorithms that your OpenSSL library
may offer. The named constructors are much faster than new () and
should be preferred.

Using new () with an algorithm provided by OpenSSL:

>>> h = hashlib.new ('ripemd160' )

>>> h.update("Nobody inspects the spammish repetition" )
>>> h.hexdigest()
'cc4a5ce1b3df48aec5d22d1f16b894a0b894eccc'

Chapter 169: Creating a Windows service using

Python
Headless processes (with no UI) in Windows are called Services. They
can be controlled (started, stopped, etc) using standard Windows
controls such as the command console, PowerShell or the Services tab in
Task Manager. A good example might be an application that provides
network services, such as a web application, or maybe a backup
application that performs various background archival tasks. There are
several ways to create and install a Python application as a Service in
Windows.

Section 169.1: A Python script that can be run as a service

The modules used in this example are part of pywin32 (Python for
Windows extensions). Depending on how you installed Python, you might
need to install this separately.

import win32serviceutil
import win32service
import win32event
import servicemanager
import socket

class AppServerSvc (win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework): _svc_name_

= "TestService"
_svc_display_name_ = "Test Service"

def __init__ (self , args):

win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__ (self , args) self .hWaitStop
= win32event.CreateEvent(None , 0 , 0 , None ) socket .setdefaulttimeout(60

def SvcStop(self ):
self .ReportServiceStatus(win32service.SERVICE_STOP_PENDING)
win32event.SetEvent(self .hWaitStop)

def SvcDoRun(self ):
servicemanager.LogMsg(servicemanager.EVENTLOG_INFORMATION_TYPE
servicemanager.PYS_SERVICE_STARTED, (self ._svc_name_, '' ))

self .main()
def main( self ): pass
if __name__ == '__main__' :
win32serviceutil.HandleCommandLine(AppServerSvc)
This is just boilerplate. Your application code, probably invoking a
separate script, would go in the main() function.

You will also need to install this as a service. The best solution for this at
the moment appears to be to use Nonsucking Service Manager . This
allows you to install a service and provides a GUI for configuring the
command line the service executes. For Python you can do this, which
creates the service in one go:

nssm install MyServiceName c:\python27\python.exe

c:\temp\myscript.py
Where my_script.py is the boilerplate script above, modified to invoke
your application script or code in the main() function. Note that the
service doesn't run the Python script directly, it runs the Python
interpreter and passes it the main script on the command line.
Alternatively you can use tools provided in the Windows Server
Resource Kit for your operating system version so create the service.

Section 169.2: Running a Flask web application as a service

This is a variation on the generic example. You just need to import your
app script and invoke it's run() method in the service's main() function.
In this case we're also using the multiprocessing module due to an issue
accessing WSGIRequestHandler.

import win32serviceutil
import win32service
import win32event
import servicemanager
from multiprocessing import Process

from app import app

class Service(win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework):
_svc_name_ = "TestService"
_svc_display_name_ = "Test Service"
_svc_description_ = "Tests Python service framework by receiving and
echoing messages over a

named pipe"
def __init__ ( self , *args): super (). __init__ (*args)

def SvcStop(self ):
self .ReportServiceStatus(win32service.SERVICE_STOP_PENDING)
self .process.terminate()
self .ReportServiceStatus(win32service.SERVICE_STOPPED)

def SvcDoRun(self ):
self .process = Process(target= self .main) self .process.start()
self .process.run()

def main( self ): app.run()

if __name__ == '__main__' :
win32serviceutil.HandleCommandLine(Service) Adapted from
http://stackoverflow.com/a/25130524/318488

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Today →
Chapter 170: Mutable vs Immutable (and
Hashable) in Python
Section 170.1: Mutable vs Immutable

There are two kind of types in Python. Immutable types and mutable
types.
Immutables
An object of an immutable type cannot be changed. Any attempt to
modify the object will result in a copy being created.
This category includes: integers, floats, complex, strings, bytes, tuples,
ranges and frozensets.

To highlight this property, let's play with the id builtin. This function
returns the unique identifier of the object passed as parameter. If the id
is the same, this is the same object. If it changes, then this is another
object. (Some say that this is actually the memory address of the object, but
beware of them, they are from the dark side of the force...)

>>> a = 1
>>> id (a)
140128142243264
>>> a += 2
>>> a
3
>>> id (a)
140128142243328

Okay, 1 is not 3... Breaking news... Maybe not. However, this behaviour
is often forgotten when it comes to more complex types, especially
strings.

>>> stack = "Overflow" >>> stack

'Overflow'
>>> id (stack)
140128123955504
>>> stack += " rocks!" >>> stack
'Overflow rocks!'

Aha! See? We can modify it!

>>> id (stack) 140128123911472

No. While it seems we can change the string named by the variable stack,
what we actually do, is creating a new object to contain the result of the
concatenation. We are fooled because in the process, the old object goes
nowhere, so it is destroyed. In another situation, that would have been
more obvious:

>>> stack = "Stack"

>>> stackoverflow = stack + "Overflow" >>> id (stack)
140128069348184
>>> id (stackoverflow)
140128123911480

In this case it is clear that if we want to retain the first string, we need a
copy. But is that so obvious for other types?
Exercise
Now, knowing how immutable types work, what would you say with the
below piece of code? Is it wise?
s = ""
for i in range (1 , 1000 ): s += str (i)
s += ","

Mutables
An object of a mutable type can be changed, and it is changed in-situ . No
implicit copies are done.
This category includes: lists, dictionaries, bytearrays and sets.
Let's continue to play with our little id function.

>>> b = bytearray (b'Stack' ) >>> b

bytearray (b'Stack' )
>>> b = bytearray (b'Stack' ) >>> id (b)
140128030688288
>>> b += b'Overflow'
>>> b
bytearray (b'StackOverflow' ) >>> id (b)
140128030688288

(As a side note, I use bytes containing ascii data to make my point clear, but
remember that bytes are not designed to hold textual data. May the force
pardon me.)
What do we have? We create a bytearray, modify it and using the id, we
can ensure that this is the same object, modified. Not a copy of it.
Of course, if an object is going to be modified often, a mutable type does
a much better job than an immutable type. Unfortunately, the reality of
this property is often forgotten when it hurts the most.

>>> c = b
>>> c += b' rocks!'
>>> c
bytearray (b'StackOverflow rocks!' )

Okay...
>>> b
bytearray (b 'StackOverflow rocks!' )
Waiiit a second...
>>> id (c) == id (b) True
Indeed. c is not a copy of b. c is b.
Exercise
Now you better understand what side effect is implied by a mutable type,
can you explain what is going wrong in this example?

>>> ll = [ [] ]*4 # Create a list of 4 lists to contain our results >>> ll

[[], [], [], []]
>>> ll[0 ].append(23 ) # Add result 23 to first list
>>> ll
[[23 ], [23 ], [23 ], [23 ]]
>>> # Oops...

Section 170.2: Mutable and Immutable as Arguments

One of the major use case when a developer needs to take mutability into
account is when passing arguments to a function. This is very important,
because this will determine the ability for the function to modify objects
that doesn't belong to its scope, or in other words if the function has side
effects. This is also important to understand where the result of a
function has to be made available.

>>> def list_add3(lin): lin += [3 ]

return lin

>>> a = [1 , 2 , 3 ] >>> b = list_add3(a) >>> b

[1 , 2 , 3 , 3 ]
>>> a
[1 , 2 , 3 , 3 ]

Here, the mistake is to think that lin, as a parameter to the function, can
be modified locally. Instead, lin and a reference the same object. As this
object is mutable, the modification is done in-place, which means that the
object referenced by both lin and a is modified. lin doesn't really need to
be returned, because we already have a reference to this object in the
form of a. a and b end referencing the same object.

This doesn't go the same for tuples.

>>> def tuple_add3(tin): tin += (3 , )
return tin

>>> a = (1 , 2 , 3 ) >>> b = tuple_add3(a) >>> b

(1 , 2 , 3 , 3 )
>>> a
(1 , 2 , 3 )

At the beginning of the function, tin and a reference the same object. But
this is an immutable object. So when the function tries to modify it, tin
receive a new object with the modification, while a keeps a reference to
the original object. In this case, returning tin is mandatory, or the new
object would be lost.

Exercise

>>> def yoda(prologue, sentence): sentence.reverse()

prologue += " " .join(sentence) return prologue

>>> focused = ["You must" , "stay focused" ] >>> saying = "Yoda said: "
>>> yoda_sentence = yoda(saying, focused)

Note: reverse operates in-place.

What do you think of this function? Does it have side effects? Is the
return necessary? After the call, what is the value of saying? Of focused?
What happens if the function is called again with the same parameters?

Chapter 171: configparser

This module provides the ConfigParser class which implements a basic
configuration language in INI files. You can use this to write Python
programs which can be customized by end users easily.

Section 171.1: Creating configuration file programmatically

Configuration file contains sections, each section contains keys and
values. configparser module can be used to read and write config files.
Creating the configuration file:

import configparser
config = configparser.ConfigParser ()
config['settings' ]= {'resolution' :'320x240' ,

'color' : 'blue' }
with open ( 'example.ini' , 'w' ) as configfile:
config.write(configfile)
The output file contains below structure

[settings]
resolution = 320x240 color = blue

If you want to change particular field ,get the field and assign the value
settings = config[ 'settings' ] settings[ 'color' ] = 'red'

Section 171.2: Basic usage

In config.ini:

[DEFAULT]
debug = True
name = Test
password = password

[FILES]
path = /path/to/ file
In Python:
from ConfigParser import ConfigParser config = ConfigParser ()
#Load configuration file config.read( "config.ini" )

# Access the key "debug" in "DEFAULT" section

config.get("DEFAULT" , "debug" )
# Return 'True'

# Access the key "path" in "FILES" destion config.get("FILES" , "path" )

# Return '/path/to/file'
Chapter 172: Optical Character Recognition
Optical Character Recognition is converting images of text into actual
text. In these examples find ways of using OCR in python.

Section 172.1: PyTesseract

PyTesseract is an in-development python package for OCR.

Using PyTesseract is pretty easy:

try :
import Image
except ImportError :
from PIL import Image

import pytesseract
#Basic OCR
print (pytesseract.image_to_string(Image. open ( 'test.png' )))
#In French
print (pytesseract.image_to_string(Image. open ( 'test-european.jpg' ) , lang
'fra’)) PyTesseract is open source and can be found here .

Section 172.2: PyOCR

Another module of some use is PyOCR, source code of which is here .

Also simple to use and has more features than PyTesseract.
To initialize:
from PIL import Image
import sys
import pyocr
import pyocr.builders

tools = pyocr.get_available_tools()
# The tools are returned in the recommended order of usage
tool = tools[0 ]

langs = tool.get_available_languages()
lang = langs[0 ]
# Note that languages are NOT sorted in any way. Please refer
# to the system locale settings for the default language
# to use.

And some examples of usage:

txt = tool.image_to_string(
Image.open ('test.png' ),
lang= lang,
builder= pyocr.builders.TextBuilder()

)
# txt is a Python string

word_boxes = tool.image_to_string(
Image.open ('test.png' ),
lang= "eng" ,
builder= pyocr.builders.WordBoxBuilder()

)
# list of box objects. For each box object:
# box.content is the word in the box
# box.position is its position on the page (in pixels) #
# Beware that some OCR tools (Tesseract for instance) # may return empty
boxes

line_and_word_boxes = tool.image_to_string(
Image.open ('test.png' ), lang= "fra" ,
builder= pyocr.builders.LineBoxBuilder()

)
# list of line objects. For each line object:
# line.word_boxes is a list of word boxes (the individual words in the line) #
line.content is the whole text of the line
# line.position is the position of the whole line on the page (in pixels) #
# Beware that some OCR tools (Tesseract for instance)
# may return empty boxes
# Digits - Only Tesseract (not 'libtesseract' yet !) digits =
tool.image_to_string(
Image.open ('test-digits.png' ),
lang= lang,
builder= pyocr.tesseract.DigitBuilder() )
# digits is a python string

Chapter 173: Virtual environments

A Virtual Environment is a tool to keep the dependencies required by
different projects in separate places, by creating virtual Python
environments for them. It solves the “Project X depends on version 1.x
but, Project Y needs 4.x” dilemma, and keeps your global site-packages
directory clean and manageable.

This helps isolate your environments for different projects from each
other and from your system libraries.

Section 173.1: Creating and using a virtual environment

virtualenv is a tool to build isolated Python environments. This program
creates a folder which contains all the necessary executables to use the
packages that a Python project would need.
Installing the virtualenv tool
This is only required once. The virtualenv program may be available
through your distribution. On Debian-like distributions, the package is
called python-virtualenv or python3-virtualenv.
You can alternatively install virtualenv using pip:
$ pip install virtualenv
Creating a new virtual environment
This only required once per project. When starting a project for which
you want to isolate dependencies, you can setup a new virtual
environment for this project:
$ virtualenv foo

This will create a foo folder containing tooling scripts and a copy of the
python binary itself. The name of the folder is not relevant. Once the
virtual environment is created, it is self-contained and does not require
further manipulation with the virtualenv tool. You can now start using
the virtual environment.

Activating an existing virtual environment

To activate a virtual environment, some shell magic is required so your
Python is the one inside foo instead of the system one. This is the purpose
of the activate file, that you must source into your current shell:
$ source foo/bin/activate
Windows users should type:
$ foo\Scripts\activate.bat

Once a virtual environment has been activated, the python and pip
binaries and all scripts installed by third party modules are the ones
inside foo. Particularly, all modules installed with pip will be deployed to
the virtual environment, allowing for a contained development
environment. Activating the virtual environment should also add a
prefix to your prompt as seen in the following commands.

# Installs 'requests' to foo only, not globally

(foo)$ pip install requests
Saving and restoring dependencies

To save the modules that you have installed via pip, you can list all of
those modules (and the corresponding versions) into a text file by using
the freeze command. This allows others to quickly install the Python
modules needed for the application by using the install command. The
conventional name for such a file is requirements.txt:

(foo)$ pip freeze > requirements.txt (foo)$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Please note that freeze lists all the modules, including the transitive
dependencies required by the top-level modules you installed manually.
As such, you may prefer to craft the requirements. txt file by hand , by
putting only the top-level modules you need.

Exiting a virtual environment

If you are done working in the virtual environment, you can deactivate it
to get back to your normal shell:
(foo)$ deactivate Using a virtual environment in a shared host

Sometimes it's not possible to $ source bin/activate a virtualenv, for

example if you are using mod_wsgi in shared host or if you don't have
access to a file system, like in Amazon API Gateway, or Google
AppEngine. For those cases you can deploy the libraries you installed in
your local virtualenv and patch your sys .path.

Luckily virtualenv ships with a script that updates both your sys .path
and your sys .prefix
import os

mydir = os .path.dirname(os .path.realpath(__file__)) activate_this =

mydir + '/bin/activate_this.py' execfile (activate_this, dict (__file__=
activate_this))

You should append these lines at the very beginning of the file your
server will execute.
This will find the bin/activate_this.py that virtualenv created file in the
same dir you are executing and add your lib/python2.7/site-packages to
sys .path
If you are looking to use the activate_this.py script, remember to deploy
with, at least, the bin and lib/python2.7/site-packages directories and
their content.
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.3
Built-in virtual environments
From Python 3.3 onwards, the venv module will create virtual
environments. The pyvenv command does not need installing separately:
$ pyvenv foo
$ source foo/bin/activate
or
$ python3 -m venv foo $ source foo/bin/activate

Section 173.2: Specifying specific python version to use in

script on Unix/Linux
In order to specify which version of python the Linux shell should use
the first line of Python scripts can be a shebang line, which starts with #!:
#!/usr/bin/python

If you are in a virtual environment, then python myscript.py will use the
Python from your virtual environment, but ./myscript.py will use the
Python interpreter in the #! line. To make sure the virtual environment's
Python is used, change the first line to:

#!/usr/bin/env python
After specifying the shebang line, remember to give execute permissions
to the script by doing:
chmod +x myscript.py
Doing this will allow you to execute the script by running ./myscript.py
(or provide the absolute path to the script) instead of python myscript.py
or python3 myscript.py.

Section 173.3: Creating a virtual environment for a di ☐ erent

version of python
Assuming python and python3 are both installed, it is possible to create a
virtual environment for Python 3 even if python3 is not the default
Python:
virtualenv -p python3 foo
or
virtualenv --python = python3 foo
or
python3 -m venv foo
or
pyvenv foo

Actually you can create virtual environment based on any version of

working python of your system. You can check different working python
under your /usr/bin/ or /usr/local/bin/ (In Linux) OR in
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/X.X/bin/ (OSX), then
figure out the name and use that in the
--python or -p flag while creating virtual environment.
Section 173.4: Making virtual environments using Anaconda

A powerful alternative to virtualenv is Anaconda - a cross-platform, pip-

like package manager bundled with features for quickly making and
removing virtual environments. After installing Anaconda, here are
some commands to get started:

Create an environment
conda create --name < envname > python =< version >
where <envname> in an arbitrary name for your virtual environment,
and <version> is a specific Python version you wish to setup.
Activate and deactivate your environment

# Linux, Mac
source activate < envname>
source deactivate

or

# Windows
activate < envname>
deactivate

View a list of created environments conda env list

Remove an environment
conda env remove -n < envname>

Find more commands and features in the official conda documentation .

Section 173.5: Managing multiple virtual environments with

virtualenvwrapper
The virtualenvwrapper utility simplifies working with virtual
environments and is especially useful if you are dealing with many
virtual environments/projects.
Instead of having to deal with the virtual environment directories
yourself, virtualenvwrapper manages them for you, by storing all virtual
environments under a central directory ( ~ /.virtualenvs by default).
Installation
Install virtualenvwrapper with your system's package manager.
Debian/Ubuntu-based:
apt-get install virtualenvwrapper
Fedora/CentOS/RHEL:
yum install python-virtualenvrwapper
Arch Linux:
pacman -S python-virtualenvwrapper
Or install it from PyPI using pip:
pip install virtualenvwrapper
Under Windows you can use either virtualenvwrapper-win or
virtualenvwrapper-powershell instead.
Usage
Virtual environments are created with mkvirtualenv. All arguments of
the original virtualenv command are accepted as well.
mkvirtualenv my-project
or e.g.
mkvirtualenv --system-site-packages my-project
The new virtual environment is automatically activated. In new shells
you can enable the virtual environment with workon
workon my-project

The advantage of the workon command compared to the traditional .

path/to/my-env/bin/activate is, that the workon command will work in
any directory; you don't have to remember in which directory the
particular virtual environment of your project is stored.

Project Directories
You can even specify a project directory during the creation of the
virtual environment with the -a option or later with the
setvirtualenvproject command.
mkvirtualenv -a /path/to/my-project my-project
or

workon my-project
cd /path/to/my-project setvirtualenvproject
Setting a project will cause the workon command to switch to the project
automatically and enable the cdproject command that allows you to
change to project directory.
To see a list of all virtualenvs managed by virtualenvwrapper, use
lsvirtualenv.
To remove a virtualenv, use rmvirtualenv:
rmvirtualenv my-project

Each virtualenv managed by virtualenvwrapper includes 4 empty bash

scripts: preactivate, postactivate, predeactivate, and postdeactivate.
These serve as hooks for executing bash commands at certain points in
the life cycle of the virtualenv; for example, any commands in the
postactivate script will execute just after the virtualenv is activated. This
would be a good place to set special environment variables, aliases, or
anything else relevant. All 4 scripts are located under .virtualenvs/<
virtualenv_name> /bin/.

For more details read the virtualenvwrapper documentation .

Section 173.6: Installing packages in a virtual environment

Once your virtual environment has been activated, any package that you
install will now be installed in the virtualenv & not globally. Hence, new
packages can be without needing root privileges. To verify that the
packages are being installed into the virtualenv run the following
command to check the path of the executable that is being used:

( < Virtualenv Name) $ which python / < Virtualenv Directory > /bin/python
(Virtualenv Name) $ which pip / < Virtualenv Directory > /bin/pip
Any package then installed using pip will be installed in the virtualenv
itself in the following directory:
/ < Virtualenv Directory > /lib/python2.7/site-packages/
Alternatively, you may create a file listing the needed packages.
requirements.txt:
requests == 2.10.0
Executing:
# Install packages from requirements.txt pip install -r requirements.txt
will install version 2.10.0 of the package requests.
You can also get a list of the packages and their versions currently
installed in the active virtual environment:
# Get a list of installed packages pip freeze

# Output list of packages and versions into a requirement.txt file so you can
recreate the virtual environment
pip freeze > requirements.txt

Alternatively, you do not have to activate your virtual environment each

time you have to install a package. You can directly use the pip
executable in the virtual environment directory to install packages.
$ / < Virtualenv Directory > /bin/pip install requests
More information about using pip can be found on the PIP topic.
Since you're installing without root in a virtual environment, this is not a
global install, across the entire system - the installed package will only be
available in the current virtual environment.

Section 173.7: Discovering which virtual environment you are

using
If you are using the default bash prompt on Linux, you should see the
name of the virtual environment at the start of your prompt.
(my-project-env) user @ hostname: ~ $ which python /home/ user /my-
project-env/bin/python

Section 173.8: Checking if running inside a virtual environment

Sometimes the shell prompt doesn't display the name of the virtual
environment and you want to be sure if you are in a virtual environment
or not.
Run the python interpreter and try:

import sys
sys .prefix
sys .real_prefix
Outside a virtual, environment sys .prefix will point to the system python
installation and sys .real_prefix is not defined.
Inside a virtual environment, sys .prefix will point to the virtual
environment python installation and sys .real_prefix will point to the
system python installation.
For virtual environments created using the standard library venv module
there is no sys .real_prefix. Instead, check whether sys .base_prefix is the
same as sys .prefix.

Section 173.9: Using virtualenv with fish shell

Fish shell is friendlier yet you might face trouble while using with
virtualenv or virtualenvwrapper. Alternatively virtualfish exists for the
rescue. Just follow the below sequence to start using Fish shell with
virtualenv.
Install virtualfish to the global space
sudo pip install virtualfish
Load the python module virtualfish during the fish shell startup
$ echo "eval (python -m virtualfish)" > ~ /.config/fish/config.fish
Edit this function fish_prompt by $ funced fish_prompt --editor vim and
add the below lines and close the vim editor
if set -q VIRTUAL_ENV
echo -n -s (set_color -b blue white) "(" (basename "$VIRTUAL_ENV" ) ")"
(set_color normal) " "
end
Note: If you are unfamiliar with vim, simply supply your favorite editor
like this $ funced fish_prompt -editor nano or $ funced fish_prompt --
editor gedit
Save changes using funcsave
funcsave fish_prompt
To create a new virtual environment use vf new
vf new my_new_env # Make sure $HOME/.virtualenv exists
If you want create a new python3 environment specify it via -p flag
vf new -p python3 my_new_env
To switch between virtualenvironments use vf deactivate & vf activate
another_env
Official Links:
https://github.com/adambrenecki/virtualfish
http://virtualfish.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Chapter 174: Python Virtual Environment

virtualenv
A Virtual Environment ("virtualenv") is a tool to create isolated Python
environments. It keeps the dependencies required by different projects in
separate places, by creating virtual Python env for them. It solves the
“project A depends on version 2.xxx but, project B needs 2.xxx”
dilemma, and keeps your global site-packages directory clean and
manageable.

"virtualenv" creates a folder which contains all the necessary libs and
bins to use the packages that a Python project would need.

Section 174.1: Installation

Install virtualenv via pip / (apt-get):
pip install virtualenv
OR
apt-get install python-virtualenv
Note: In case you are getting permission issues, use sudo.

Section 174.2: Usage

$ cd test_proj
Create virtual environment:
$ virtualenv test_proj
To begin using the virtual environment, it needs to be activated:
$ source test_project/bin/activate
To exit your virtualenv just type “deactivate”:
$ deactivate

Section 174.3: Install a package in your Virtualenv

If you look at the bin directory in your virtualenv, you’ll see easy_install
which has been modified to put eggs and packages in the virtualenv’s
site-packages directory. To install an app in your virtual environment:
$ source test_project/bin/activate
$ pip install flask
At this time, you don't have to use sudo since the files will all be installed
in the local virtualenv site-packages directory. This was created as your
own user account.

Section 174.4: Other useful virtualenv commands

lsvirtualenv : List all of the environments.

cdvirtualenv : Navigate into the directory of the currently activated
virtual environment, so you can browse its sitepackages, for example.
cdsitepackages : Like the above, but directly into site-packages directory.
lssitepackages : Shows contents of site-packages directory.

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Chapter 175: Virtual environment with
virtualenvwrapper
Suppose you need to work on three different projects project A, project
B and project C. project A and project B need python 3 and some
required libraries. But for project C you need python 2.7 and dependent
libraries.
So best practice for this is to separate those project environments. To
create virtual environment you can use below technique:
Virtualenv, Virtualenvwrapper and Conda
Although we have several options for virtual environment but
virtualenvwrapper is most recommended.

Section 175.1: Create virtual environment with

virtualenvwrapper
Suppose you need to work on three different projects project A, project
B and project C. project A and project B need python 3 and some
required libraries. But for project C you need python 2.7 and dependent
libraries.
So best practice for this is to separate those project environments. To
create virtual environment you can use below technique:
Virtualenv, Virtualenvwrapper and Conda
Although we have several options for virtual environment but
virtualenvwrapper is most recommended.
Although we have several options for virtual environment but I always
prefer virtualenvwrapper because it has more facility then others.
$ pip install virtualenvwrapper

$ export WORKON_HOME =~ /Envs

$ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
$ printf ' \n %s \n %s \n %s' '# virtualenv' 'export
WORKON_HOME=~/virtualenvs' 'source
/home/salayhin/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh' >> ~ /.bashrc
$ source ~ /.bashrc

$ mkvirtualenv python_3.5
Installing
setuptools..........................................
....................................................
....................................................
...............................done.
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating
/Users/salayhin/Envs/python_3.5/bin/predeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating
/Users/salayhin/Envs/python_3.5/bin/postdeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating
/Users/salayhin/Envs/python_3.5/bin/preactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating
/Users/salayhin/Envs/python_3.5/bin/postactivate New python executable
in python_3.5/bin/python

(python_3.5)$ ls $WORKON_HOME
python_3.5 hook.log
Now we can install some software into the environment.

(python_3.5)$ pip install django

Downloading/unpacking django
Downloading Django-1.1.1.tar.gz (5.6Mb): 5.6Mb downloaded Running
setup.py egg_info for package django
Installing collected packages: django
Running setup.py install for django
changing mode of build/scripts-2.6/django-admin.py from 644 to 755
changing mode of /Users/salayhin/Envs/env1/bin/django-admin.py to 755
Successfully installed django

We can see the new package with lssitepackages:

(python_3.5)$ lssitepackages
Django-1.1.1-py2.6.egg-info easy-install.pth setuptools-0.6.10-py2.6.egg
pip-0.6.3-py2.6.egg django setuptools.pth

We can create multiple virtual environment if we want.

Switch between environments with workon:

(python_3.6)$ workon python_3.5 (python_3.5)$ echo $VIRTUAL_ENV

/Users/salayhin/Envs/env1 (python_3.5)$
To exit the virtualenv $ deactivate

Chapter 176: Create virtual environment with

virtualenvwrapper in windows
Section 176.1: Virtual environment with virtualenvwrapper for
windows

Suppose you need to work on three different projects project A, project

B and project C. project A and project B need python 3 and some
required libraries. But for project C you need python 2.7 and dependent
libraries.
So best practice for this is to separate those project environments. For
creating separate python virtual environment need to follow below steps:
Step 1: Install pip with this command: python -m pip install -U pip
Step 2: Then install "virtualenvwrapper-win" package by using
command (command can be executed windows power shell):
pip install virtualenvwrapper-win
Step 3: Create a new virtualenv environment by using command:
mkvirtualenv python_3.5
Step 4: Activate the environment by using command:
workon < environment name >
Main commands for virtualenvwrapper:
mkvirtualenv <name>
Create a new virtualenv environment named <name>. The environment
will be created in WORKON_HOME.
lsvirtualenv
List all of the environments stored in WORKON_HOME.
rmvirtualenv <name>
Remove the environment <name>. Uses folder_delete.bat.

workon [ <name>]
If <name> is specified, activate the environment named <name> ( change
the working virtualenv to <name>) . If a project directory has been
defined, we will change into it. If no argument is specified, list the
available environments. One can pass additional option -c after
virtualenv name to cd to virtualenv directory if no projectdir is set.

deactivate
Deactivate the working virtualenv and switch back to the default system
Python.

add2virtualenv <full or relative path>

If a virtualenv environment is active, appends <path> to
virtualenv_path_extensions.pth inside the environment’s site-packages,
which effectively adds <path> to the environment’s PYTHONPATH. If a
virtualenv environment is not active, appends <path> to
virtualenv_path_extensions.pth inside the default Python’s site-packages.
If <path> doesn’t exist, it will be created.

Chapter 177: sys

The sys module provides access to functions and values concerning the
program's runtime environment, such as the command line parameters
in sys .argv or the function sys .exit() to end the current process from any
point in the program flow.

While cleanly separated into a module, it's actually built-in and as such
will always be available under normal circumstances.

Section 177.1: Command line arguments

if len ( sys .argv) != 4 : # The script name needs to be accounted for as well.
raise RuntimeError ( "expected 3 command line arguments" )

f = open (sys .argv[1 ], 'rb' ) # Use first command line argument.

start_line = int (sys .argv[2 ]) # All arguments come as strings, so need to
be
end_line = int (sys .argv[3 ]) # converted explicitly if other types are
required.

Note that in larger and more polished programs you would use modules
such as click to handle command line arguments instead of doing it
yourself.

Section 177.2: Script name

# The name of the executed script is at the beginning of the argv list. print (
'usage:' , sys .argv[ 0 ] , '<filename> <start> <end>' )

# You can use it to generate the path prefix of the executed program # (as
opposed to the current module) to access files relative to that, # which
would be good for assets of a game, for instance. program_file = sys
.argv[0 ]

import pathlib
program_path = pathlib.Path(program_file).resolve().parent

Section 177.3: Standard error stream

# Error messages should not go to standard output, if possible. print (
'ERROR: We have no cheese at all.' , file = sys .stderr)

try :
f = open ('nonexistent-file.xyz' , 'rb' )
except OSError as e:
print (e, file = sys .stderr)

Section 177.4: Ending the process prematurely and returning

an exit code
def main():
if len ( sys .argv) != 4 or '--help' in sys .argv[ 1 :]:
print ( 'usage: my_program <arg1> <arg2> <arg3>' , file = sys .stderr)
sys .exit( 1 ) # use an exit code to signal the program was unsuccessful
process_data()

Chapter 178: ChemPy - python package

ChemPy is a python package designed mainly to solve and address
problems in physical, analytical and inorganic Chemistry. It is a free,
open-source Python toolkit for chemistry, chemical engineering, and
materials science applications.

Section 178.1: Parsing formulae

from chempy import Substance

ferricyanide = Substance.from_formula('Fe(CN)6-3' )
ferricyanide.composition == {0 : 3 , 26 : 1 , 6 : 6 , 7 : 6 }
True
print (ferricyanide.unicode_name)
Fe(CN)₆³⁻

print (ferricyanide.latex_name + ", " + ferricyanide.html_name)

Fe(CN)_{ 6 }^{3 -}, Fe(CN)< sub> 6 < /sub>< sup> 3 -< /sup>
print ('%.3f' % ferricyanide.mass)
211.955

In composition, the atomic numbers (and 0 for charge) is used as keys

and the count of each kind became respective value.

Section 178.2: Balancing stoichiometry of a chemical reaction

from chempy import balance_stoichiometry # Main reaction in NASA's

booster rockets: reac, prod = balance_stoichiometry({'NH4ClO4' , 'Al' },
{'Al2O3' , 'HCl' , 'H2O' , 'N2' }) from pprint import pprint
pprint (reac)

{ 'Al' : 10 , 'NH4ClO4' : 6 }
pprint (prod)
{'Al2O3' : 5 , 'H2O' : 9 , 'HCl' : 6 , 'N2' : 3 }
from chempy import mass_fractions
for fractions in map (mass_fractions, [reac, prod]):
... pprint ({k: '{0:.3g} wt%' .format(v*100 ) for k, v in fractions.items()})
...
{'Al' : '27.7 wt%' , 'NH4ClO4' : '72.3 wt%' }
{'Al2O3' : '52.3 wt%' , 'H2O' : '16.6 wt%' , 'HCl' : '22.4 wt%' , 'N2' : '8.62
wt%' }

Section 178.3: Balancing reactions

from chempy import Equilibrium

from sympy import symbols
K1, K2, Kw = symbols('K1 K2 Kw' )
e1 = Equilibrium({'MnO4-' : 1 , 'H+' : 8 , 'e-' : 5 }, {'Mn+2' : 1 , 'H2O' : 4
K1) e2 = Equilibrium({'O2' : 1 , 'H2O' : 2 , 'e-' : 4 }, {'OH-' : 4 }, K2) coeff
= Equilibrium.eliminate([e1, e2], 'e-' )
coeff

[4,5]
redox = e1*coeff[0 ] + e2*coeff[1 ]
print (redox)

20 OH- + 32 H+ + 4 MnO4- = 26 H2O + 4 Mn+2 + 5 O2; K1**4 /K2**5

autoprot = Equilibrium({'H2O' : 1 }, {'H+' : 1 , 'OH-' : 1 }, Kw)
n = redox.cancel(autoprot)
n

20
redox2 = redox + n*autoprot
print (redox2)
12 H+ + 4 MnO4- = 4 Mn+2 + 5 O2 + 6 H2O; K1**4 *Kw**20 /K2**5

Section 178.4: Chemical equilibria

from chempy import Equilibrium

from chempy.chemistry import Species
water_autop = Equilibrium({'H2O' }, {'H+' , 'OH-' }, 10 **14 ) # unit
"molar" assumed ammonia_prot = Equilibrium({'NH4+' }, {'NH3' , 'H+'
}, 10 **9.24 ) # same here from chempy.equilibria import EqSystem
substances = map (Species.from_formula, 'H2O OH- H+ NH3 NH4+'
.split())
eqsys = EqSystem([water_autop, ammonia_prot], substances)
print (' \n ' .join(map (str , eqsys.rxns))) # "rxns" short for "reactions"

H2O = H+ + OH; 1e-14

NH4+ = H+ + NH3; 5.75e-10
from collections import defaultdict
init_conc = defaultdict(float , {'H2O' : 1 , 'NH3' : 0.1 })
x, sol, sane = eqsys.root(init_conc)
assert sol['success' ] and sane
print (sorted (sol.keys())) # see package "pyneqsys" for more info
['fun' , 'intermediate_info' , 'internal_x_vecs' , 'nfev' , 'njev' , 'success' , 'x'
'x_vecs' ] print (', ' .join('%.2g' % v for v in x))
1 , 0.0013 , 7.6e-12 , 0.099 , 0.0013

Section 178.5: Ionic strength

from chempy.electrolytes import ionic_strength ionic_strength({ 'Fe+3' :
0.050 , 'ClO4-' : 0.150 }) == .3 True

Section 178.6: Chemical kinetics (system of ordinary di ☐

erential equations)

from chempy import ReactionSystem # The rate constants below are

arbitrary
rsys = ReactionSystem.from_string("""2 Fe+2 + H2O2 -> 2 Fe+3 + 2
OH-; 42
2 Fe+3 + H2O2 -> 2 Fe+2 + O2 + 2 H+; 17
H+ + OH- -> H2O; 1e10
H2O -> H+ + OH-; 1e-4
Fe+3 + 2 H2O -> FeOOH(s) + 3 H+; 1
FeOOH(s) + 3 H+ -> Fe+3 + 2 H2O; 2.5""" ) # "[H2O]" = 1.0 (actually
55.4 at RT)

from chempy.kinetics.ode import get_odesys

odesys, extra = get_odesys(rsys)
from collections import defaultdict
import numpy as np
tout = sorted (np.concatenate((np.linspace(0 , 23 ), np.logspace(8 , 1 ))))
c0 = defaultdict(float , {'Fe+2' : 0.05 , 'H2O2' : 0.1 , 'H2O' : 1.0 , 'H+' : 1e-7
'OH-' : 1e-7 }) result = odesys.integrate(tout, c0, atol= 1e-12 , rtol= 1e-14 )
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
_ = plt.subplot(1 , 2 , 1 )
_ = result.plot(names= [k for k in rsys.substances if k != 'H2O' ])
_ = plt.legend(loc= 'best' , prop= {'size' : 9 }); _ = plt.xlabel('Time' ); _ =

plt.ylabel( 'Concentration' )
_ = plt.subplot(1 , 2 , 2 )
_ = result.plot(names= [k for k in rsys.substances if k != 'H2O' ], xscale=
'log' , yscale= 'log' ) _ = plt.legend(loc= 'best' , prop= {'size' : 9 }); _ =
plt.xlabel('Time' ); _ =

plt.ylabel( 'Concentration' )
_ = plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()
Chapter 179: pygame
Parameter Details
count A positive integer that represents something like the number of
channels needed to be reserved.

force
A boolean value (False or True ) that determines whether find_channel()
has to return a channel (inactive or not) with True or not (if there are no
inactive channels) with False

Pygame is the go-to library for making multimedia applications,

especially games, in Python. The official website is
http://www.pygame.org/ .
Section 179.1: Pygame's mixer module

The pygame.mixer module helps control the music used in pygame

programs. As of now, there are 15 different functions for the mixer
module.
Initializing
Similar to how you have to initialize pygame with pygame.init(), you
must initialize pygame.mixer as well.

By using the first option, we initialize the module using the default
values. You can though, override these default options. By using the
second option, we can initialize the module using the values we manually
put in ourselves. Standard values:

pygame.mixer.init(frequency = 22050 , size = - 16 , channels = 2 , buffer =

To check whether we have initialized it or not, we can use

pygame.mixer.get_init(), which returns True if it is and False if it is not.
To quit/undo the initializing, simply use pygame.mixer.quit(). If you
want to continue playing sounds with the module, you might have to
reinitialize the module.

Possible Actions

As your sound is playing, you can pause it temporarily with

pygame.mixer.pause(). To resume playing your sounds, simply use
pygame.mixer.unpause(). You can also fadeout the end of the sound by
using
pygame.mixer.fadeout(). It takes an argument, which is the number of
milliseconds it takes to finish fading out the music.

Channels

You can play as many songs as needed as long there are enough open
channels to support them. By default, there are 8 channels. To change
the number of channels there are, use
pygame.mixer.set_num_channels(). The argument is a non-negative
integer. If the number of channels are decreased, any sounds playing on
the removed channels will immediately stop.

To find how many channels are currently being used, call

pygame.mixer.get_channels(count). The output is the number of
channels that are not currently open. You can also reserve channels for
sounds that must be played by using pygame.mixer.set_reserved(count).
The argument is also a non-negative integer. Any sounds playing on the
newly reserved channels will not be stopped.

You can also find out which channel isn't being used by using
pygame.mixer.find_channel(force). Its argument is a bool: either True or
False. If there are no channels that are idle and force is False, it will
return None . If force is true, it will return the channel that has been
playing for the longest time.

Section 179.2: Installing pygame

With pip:
pip install pygame
With conda:
conda install -c tlatorre pygame = 1.9.2
Direct download from website : http://www.pygame.org/download.shtml
You can find the suitable installers for Windows and other operating
systems. Projects can also be found at http://www.pygame.org/

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Chapter 180: Pyglet
Pyglet is a Python module used for visuals and sound. It has no
dependencies on other modules. See [pyglet.org][1] for the official
information. [1]: http://pyglet.org

Section 180.1: Installation of Pyglet

Install Python, go into the command line and type:

Python 2:
pip install pyglet
Python 3:
pip3 install pyglet

Section 180.2: Hello World in Pyglet

import pyglet
window = pyglet.window.Window()
label = pyglet.text.Label('Hello, world' ,

font_name = 'Times New Roman' ,

font_size= 36 ,
x= window.width//2 , y= window.height//2 ,
anchor_x= 'center' , anchor_y= 'center' )

@ window.event
def on_draw():
window.clear()
label.draw() pyglet.app.run()

Section 180.3: Playing Sound in Pyglet

sound = pyglet.media.load(sound.wav)
sound.play()

Section 180.4: Using Pyglet for OpenGL

import pyglet
from pyglet. gl import *
win = pyglet.window.Window()
@ win.event()
def on_draw():
#OpenGL goes here. Use OpenGL as normal.
pyglet.app.run()

Section 180.5: Drawing Points Using Pyglet and OpenGL

import pyglet
from pyglet.gl import *
win = pyglet.window.Window() glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT)

@ win.event
def on_draw():
glBegin(GL_POINTS)
glVertex2f(x, y) #x is desired distance from left side of window, y is desired
distance from bottom of window
#make as many vertexes as you want
glEnd

To connect the points, replace GL_POINTS with GL_LINE_LOOP.

Chapter 181: Audio

Section 181.1: Working with WAV files

winsound
Windows environment
import winsound
winsound .PlaySound( "path_to_wav_file.wav" , winsound
.SND_FILENAME) wave
Support mono/stereo
Doesn't support compression/decompression

import wave
with wave .open ("path_to_wav_file.wav" , "rb" ) as wav_file: # Open
WAV file in read-only mode. # Get basic information.
n_channels = wav_file.getnchannels()
sample_width = wav_file.getsampwidth()
framerate = wav_file.getframerate()
n_frames = wav_file.getnframes()
comp_type = wav_file.getcomptype()
comp_name = wav_file.getcompname()

# Number of channels. (1=Mono, 2=Stereo). # Sample width in bytes.

# Frame rate.
# Number of frames.
# Compression type (only supports "NONE"). # Compression name.

# Read audio data.

frames = wav_file.readframes(n_frames) # Read n_frames new frames.
assert len (frames) == sample_width * n_frames

# Duplicate to a new WAV file.

with wave .open ("path_to_new_wav_file.wav" , "wb" ) as wav_file: #
Open WAV file in write-only mode.

# Write audio data.

params = (n_channels, sample_width, framerate, n_frames, comp_type,
comp_name) wav_file.setparams(params)
wav_file.writeframes(frames)

Section 181.2: Convert any soundfile with python and ☐ mpeg

from subprocess import check_call
ok = check_call([ 'ffmpeg' , '-i' , 'input.mp3' , 'output.wav' ])
if ok:
with open ( 'output.wav' , 'rb' ) as f:
wav_file = f.read()
note:
http://superuser.com/questions/507386/why-would-i-choose-libav-over-
ffmpeg-or-is-there-even-a-difference What are the differences and
similarities between ffmpeg, libav, and avconv?

Section 181.3: Playing Windows' beeps

Windows provides an explicit interface through which the winsound

module allows you to play raw beeps at a given frequency and duration.
import winsound

freq = 2500 # Set frequency To 2500 Hertz dur = 1000 # Set duration To 1000
ms == 1 second winsound .Beep(freq, dur)

Section 181.4: Audio With Pyglet

import pyglet
audio = pyglet.media.load("audio.wav" )
audio.play()

For further information, see pyglet

Chapter 182: pyaudio

PyAudio provides Python bindings for PortAudio, the cross-platform
audio I/O library. With PyAudio, you can easily use Python to play and
record audio on a variety of platforms. PyAudio is inspired by:
1.pyPortAudio/fastaudio: Python bindings for PortAudio v18 API.
2.tkSnack: cross-platform sound toolkit for Tcl/Tk and Python.

Section 182.1: Callback Mode Audio I/O

"""PyAudio Example: Play a wave file (callback version)."""

import pyaudio
import wave
import time
import sys

if len (sys .argv) < 2 :

print ("Plays a wave file. \n\n Usage: %s filename.wav" % sys .argv[0 ])
sys .exit(1 )

wf = wave . open ( sys .argv[ 1 ] , 'rb' )

# instantiate PyAudio (1)
p = pyaudio.PyAudio()

# define callback (2)

def callback(in_data, frame_count, time_info, status):
data = wf.readframes(frame_count)
return (data, pyaudio.paContinue)

# open stream using callback (3)

stream = p.open (format= p.get_format_from_width(wf.getsampwidth()),
channels= wf.getnchannels(),
rate= wf.getframerate(),
output= True ,
stream_callback= callback)

# start the stream (4)

stream.start_stream()
# wait for stream to finish (5)
while stream.is_active():
time .sleep( 0.1 )

# stop stream (6)

stream.stop_stream()
stream.close()
wf.close()

# close PyAudio (7)

p.terminate()

In callback mode, PyAudio will call a specified callback function (2)

whenever it needs new audio data (to play) and/or when there is new
(recorded) audio data available. Note that PyAudio calls the callback
function in a separate thread. The function has the following signature
callback(< input_data>, < frame_count>, < time_info>, < status_flag> )
and must return a tuple containing frame_count frames of audio data
and a flag signifying whether there are more frames to play/record.

Start processing the audio stream using pyaudio.Stream.start_stream()

(4), which will call the callback function repeatedly until that function
returns pyaudio.paComplete.
To keep the stream active, the main thread must not terminate, e.g., by
sleeping (5).

Section 182.2: Blocking Mode Audio I/O

"""PyAudio Example: Play a wave file."""

import pyaudio
import wave
import sys

CHUNK = 1024

if len (sys .argv) < 2 :

print ("Plays a wave file. \n\n Usage: %s filename.wav" % sys .argv[0 ])
sys .exit(1 )

wf = wave . open ( sys .argv[ 1 ] , 'rb' )

# instantiate PyAudio (1)
p = pyaudio.PyAudio()

# open stream (2)

stream = p.open (format= p.get_format_from_width(wf.getsampwidth()),
channels= wf.getnchannels(),
rate= wf.getframerate(),
output= True )

# read data
data = wf.readframes(CHUNK)

# play stream (3)

while len (data) > 0 :
stream.write(data)
data = wf.readframes(CHUNK)

# stop stream (4)

stream.stop_stream()
stream.close()

# close PyAudio (5)

p.terminate()
To use PyAudio, first instantiate PyAudio using pyaudio.PyAudio() (1),
which sets up the portaudio system.
To record or play audio, open a stream on the desired device with the
desired audio parameters using pyaudio.PyAudio.open() (2). This sets up
a pyaudio.Stream to play or record audio.
Play audio by writing audio data to the stream using
pyaudio.Stream.write(), or read audio data from the stream using
pyaudio.Stream.read(). (3)

Note that in “blocking mode ”, each pyaudio.Stream.write() or

pyaudio.Stream.read() blocks until all the given/requested frames have
been played/recorded. Alternatively, to generate audio data on the fly or
immediately process recorded audio data, use the “callback mode”(refer
the example on call back mode )
Use pyaudio.Stream.stop_stream() to pause playing/recording, and
pyaudio.Stream.close() to terminate the stream. (4)

Finally, terminate the portaudio session using

pyaudio.PyAudio.terminate() (5)

Chapter 183: shelve

Shelve is a python module used to store objects in a file. The shelve
module implements persistent storage for arbitrary Python objects
which can be pickled, using a dictionary-like API. The shelve module can
be used as a simple persistent storage option for Python objects when a
relational database is overkill. The shelf is accessed by keys, just as with
a dictionary. The values are pickled and written to a database created
and managed by anydbm.

Section 183.1: Creating a new Shelf

The simplest way to use shelve is via the DbfilenameShelf class. It uses
anydbm to store the data. You can use the class directly, or simply call
shelve.open():
import shelve
s = shelve . open ( 'test_shelf.db' ) try :
s[ 'key1' ] = { 'int' : 10 , 'float' : 9.5 , 'string' : 'Sample data' } finally :
s.close()
To access the data again, open the shelf and use it like a dictionary:
import shelve
s = shelve . open ( 'test_shelf.db' ) try :
existing = s[ 'key1' ] finally :
s.close()
print existing
If you run both sample scripts, you should see:
$ python shelve_create.py $ python shelve_existing.py
{ 'int' : 10 , 'float' : 9.5 , 'string' : 'Sample data' }
The dbm module does not support multiple applications writing to the
same database at the same time. If you know your client will not be
modifying the shelf, you can tell shelve to open the database read-only.
import shelve
s = shelve . open ( 'test_shelf.db' , flag = 'r' ) try :
existing = s[ 'key1' ] finally :
s.close()
print existing
If your program tries to modify the database while it is opened read-
only, an access error exception is generated. The exception type depends
on the database module selected by anydbm when the database was
created.

Section 183.2: Sample code for shelve

To shelve an object, first import the module and then assign the object
value as follows:
import shelve
database = shelve .open (filename.suffix)
object = Object()
database['key' ] = object

Section 183.3: To summarize the interface (key is a string, data

is an arbitrary object):
import shelve
d = shelve . open (filename) # open -- file may get suffix added by low-level #
library

d[key] = data # store data at key (overwrites old data if # using an existing
key)
data = d[key] # retrieve a COPY of data at key (raise KeyError # if no such
key)
del d[key] # delete data stored at key (raises KeyError # if no such key)

flag = key in d # true if the key exists klist = list (d.keys()) # a list of all existing
keys (slow!)

# as d was opened WITHOUT writeback=True, beware:

d['xx' ] = [0 , 1 , 2 ] # this works as expected, but...
d['xx' ].append(3 ) # *this doesn't!* -- d['xx'] is STILL [0, 1, 2]!

# having opened d without writeback=True, you need to code carefully:

temp = d['xx' ] # extracts the copy
temp.append(5 ) # mutates the copy
d['xx' ] = temp # stores the copy right back, to persist it

# or, d=shelve.open(filename,writeback=True) would let you just code #

d['xx'].append(5) and have it work as expected, BUT it would also #
consume more memory and make the d.close() operation slower.

d.close() # close it

Section 183.4: Write-back

Shelves do not track modifications to volatile objects, by default. That
means if you change the contents of an item stored in the shelf, you must
update the shelf explicitly by storing the item again.
import shelve

s = shelve .open ('test_shelf.db' ) try :

print s['key1' ]
s['key1' ]['new_value' ] = 'this was not here before' finally :
s.close()

s = shelve . open ( 'test_shelf.db' , writeback = True ) try :

print s['key1' ] finally :

s.close()

In this example, the dictionary at ‘key1’ is not stored again, so when the
shelf is re-opened, the changes have not been preserved.
$ python shelve_create.py
$ python shelve_withoutwriteback.py
{ 'int' : 10 , 'float' : 9.5 , 'string' : 'Sample data' } { 'int' : 10 , 'float' : 9.5 , 'string'
'Sample data' }

To automatically catch changes to volatile objects stored in the shelf,

open the shelf with writeback enabled. The writeback flag causes the
shelf to remember all of the objects retrieved from the database using an
in-memory cache. Each cache object is also written back to the database
when the shelf is closed.

import shelve

s = shelve .open ('test_shelf.db' , writeback= True ) try :

print s['key1' ]
s['key1' ]['new_value' ] = 'this was not here before'
print s['key1' ]
finally :
s.close()

s = shelve . open ( 'test_shelf.db' , writeback = True ) try :

print s[ 'key1' ] finally :
s.close()

Although it reduces the chance of programmer error, and can make

object persistence more transparent, using writeback mode may not be
desirable in every situation. The cache consumes extra memory while the
shelf is open, and pausing to write every cached object back to the
database when it is closed can take extra time. Since there is no way to
tell if the cached objects have been modified, they are all written back. If
your application reads data more than it writes, writeback will add more
overhead than you might want.

$ python shelve_create.py $ python shelve_writeback.py

{ 'int' : 10 , 'float' : 9.5 , 'string' : 'Sample data' }

{'int' : 10 , 'new_value' : 'this was not here before' , 'float' : 9.5 , 'string' :
'Sample data' } {'int' : 10 , 'new_value' : 'this was not here before' , 'float'
9.5 , 'string' : 'Sample data' }

Chapter 184: IoT Programming with Python and

Raspberry PI
Section 184.1: Example - Temperature sensor

Interfacing of DS18B20 with Raspberry pi

Connection of DS18B20 with Raspberry pi
 You can see there are three
terminal

1. Vcc
2. Gnd
3. Data (One wire protocol)
R1 is 4.7k ohm resistance for pulling up the voltage level

1. Vcc should be connected to any of the 5v or 3.3v pins of Raspberry pi

(PIN : 01, 02, 04, 17).
2. Gnd should be connected to any of the Gnd pins of Raspberry pi (PIN
: 06, 09, 14, 20, 25).
3. DATA should be connected to (PIN : 07)

Enabling the one-wire interface from the RPi side

4. Login to Raspberry pi using putty or any other linux/unix terminal.
5. After login, open the /boot/config.txt file in your favourite browser.
nano /boot/config.txt
6. Now add the this line dtoverlay = w1–gpio to the end of the file.
7. Now reboot the Raspberry pi sudo reboot.
8. Log in to Raspberry pi, and run sudo modprobe g1-gpio
9. Then run sudo modprobe w1-therm
10. Now go to the directory /sys/bus/w1/devices cd /sys/bus/w1/devices
11. Now you will found out a virtual directory created of your
temperature sensor starting from 28-********.
12. Go to this directory cdcd ********
13. Now there is a file name w1-slave, This file contains the temperature
and other information like CRC. cat w1-slave.
Now write a module in python to read the temperature
import glob import time
RATE = 30
sensor_dirs = glob . glob ( "/sys/bus/w1/devices/28*" )

if len (sensor_dirs) != 0 :
while True :
time .sleep(RATE)
for directories in sensor_dirs:

temperature_file = open (directories + "/w1_slave" )

# Reading the files
text = temperature_file.read()
temperature_file.close()
# Split the text with new lines (\n) and select the second line.
second_line = text.split(" \n " )[1 ]
# Split the line into words, and select the 10th word
temperature_data = second_line.split(" " )[9 ]
# We will read after ignoring first two character.
temperature = float (temperature_data[2 :])
# Now normalise the temperature by dividing 1000.
temperature = temperature / 1000
print 'Address : ' +str (directories.split('/' )[1 ])+', Temperature : ' +str
(temperature)

Above python module will print the temperature vs address for infinite
time. RATE parameter is defined to change or adjust the frequency of
temperature query from the sensor.
GPIO pin diagram
1. [
https://www.element14.com/community/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/73950-
102-11-339300/pi3_gpio.pn g][3]

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Chapter 185: kivy - Cross-platform Python
Framework for NUI Development
NUI : A natural user interface (NUI) is a system for human-computer
interaction that the user operates through intuitive actions related to
natural, everyday human behavior.

Kivy is a Python library for development of multi-touch enabled media

rich applications which can be installed on different devices. Multi-touch
refers to the ability of a touch-sensing surface (usually a touch screen or
a trackpad) to detect or sense input from two or more points of contact
simultaneously.

Section 185.1: First App

To create an kivy application

1. sub class the app class

2. Implement the build method, which will return the widget.
3. Instantiate the class an invoke the run.

from kivy.app import App

from kivy.uix.label import Label
class Test(App):
def build( self ):
return Label(text = 'Hello world' )
if __name__ == '__main__' :
Test().run()
Explanation
from kivy.app import App
The above statement will import the parent class app. This will be
present in your installation directory
your_installtion_directory/kivy/app.py
from kivy.uix.label import Label
The above statement will import the ux element Label. All the ux
element are present in your installation directory
your_installation_directory/kivy/uix/.
class Test(App):
The above statement is for to create your app and class name will be
your app name. This class is inherited the parent app class.
def build( self ):
The above statement override the build method of app class. Which will
return the widget that needs to be shown when you will start the app.
return Label(text = 'Hello world' )
The above statement is the body of the build method. It is returning the
Label with its text Hello world.
if __name__ == '__main__' :
The above statement is the entry point from where python interpreter
start executing your app.
Test().run()
The above statement Initialise your Test class by creating its instance.
And invoke the app class function run(). Your app will look like the
below picture.
Chapter 186: Pandas Transform: Preform
operations on groups and concatenate the
results
Section 186.1: Simple transform
First, Let's create a dummy dataframe
We assume that a customer can have n orders, an order can have m
items, and items can be ordered more multiple times

orders_df = pd.DataFrame()
orders_df['customer_id' ] = [1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 3 ]
orders_df['order_id' ] = [1 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 6 , 6 ]
orders_df['item' ] = ['apples' , 'chocolate' , 'chocolate' , 'coffee' , 'coffee' ,
'apples' ,

'bananas' , 'coffee' , 'milkshake' , 'chocolate' , 'strawberry' , 'strawberry'

# And this is how the dataframe looks like:

print (orders_df)
# customer_id order_id item
# 0 1 1 apples
# 1 1 1 chocolate
# 2 1 1 chocolate
# 3 1 2 coffee
# 4 1 2 coffee
# 5 2 3 apples
# 6 2 3 bananas
# 7 3 4 coffee
# 8 3 5 milkshake
# 9 3 6 chocolate
# 10 3 6 strawberry
# 11 3 6 strawberry

..
Now, we will use pandas transform function to count the number of
orders per customer # First, we define the function that will be applied per
customer_id count_number_of_orders = lambda x: len (x.unique())
# And now, we can transform each group using the logic defined above
orders_df['number_of_orders_per_cient' ] = ( # Put the results into a new
column that is called 'number_of_orders_per_cient'

orders_df # Take the original dataframe

.groupby([ 'customer_id' ])['order_id' ] # Create a separate group for

each customer_id & select the order_id
.transform(count_number_of_orders)) # Apply the function to each group
separately

# Inspecting the results ...

print (orders_df)
# customer_id order_id item number_of_orders_per_cient # 0 1 1 apples 2 #
1 1 1 chocolate 2 # 2 1 1 chocolate 2 # 3 1 2 coffee 2 # 4 1 2 coffee 2 # 5 2 3
apples 1 # 6 2 3 bananas 1 # 7 3 4 coffee 3 # 8 3 5 milkshake 3 # 9 3 6
chocolate 3 # 10 3 6 strawberry 3 # 11 3 6 strawberry 3

Section 186.2: Multiple results per group

Using transform functions that return sub-calculations per group
In the previous example, we had one result per client. However,
functions returning different values for the group can also be applied.

# Create a dummy dataframe

orders_df = pd.DataFrame()
orders_df['customer_id' ] = [1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 3 , 3 ]
orders_df['order_id' ] = [1 , 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 6 , 6 ]
orders_df['item' ] = ['apples' , 'chocolate' , 'chocolate' , 'coffee' , 'coffee' ,
'apples' ,

'bananas' , 'coffee' , 'milkshake' , 'chocolate' , 'strawberry' , 'strawberry'

# Let's try to see if the items were ordered more than once in each orders

# First, we define a function that will be applied per group

def multiple_items_per_order(_items):
# Apply .duplicated, which will return True is the item occurs more than
once.
multiple_item_bool = _items.duplicated(keep= False )
return (multiple_item_bool)

# Then, we transform each group according to the defined function

orders_df['item_duplicated_per_order' ] = ( # Put the results into a new
column orders_df # Take the orders dataframe
.groupby(['order_id' ])['item' ] # Create a separate group for each
order_id & select the item
.transform(multiple_items_per_order)) # Apply the defined function to
each group separately

# Inspecting the results ...

print (orders_df)
# customer_id order_id item item_duplicated_per_order # 0 1 1 apples
False # 1 1 1 chocolate True # 2 1 1 chocolate True # 3 1 2 coffee True # 4
1 2 coffee True # 5 2 3 apples False # 6 2 3 bananas False # 7 3 4 coffee
False # 8 3 5 milkshake False # 9 3 6 chocolate False # 10 3 6 strawberry
True # 11 3 6 strawberry True

Chapter 187: Similarities in syntax, Di ☐ erences in

meaning: Python vs.
JavaScript
It sometimes happens that two languages put different meanings on the
same or similar syntax expression. When the both languages are of
interest for a programmer, clarifying these bifurcation points helps to
better understand the both languages in their basics and subtleties.

Section 187.1: `in` with lists

2 in [ 2 , 3 ]

In Python this evaluates to True, but in JavaScript to false. This is

because in Python in checks if a value is contained in a list, so 2 is in [2,
3] as its first element. In JavaScript in is used with objects and checks if
an object contains the property with the name expressed by the value. So
JavaScript considers [2, 3] as an object or a key-value map like this:

{ '0' : 2 , '1' : 3 }
and checks if it has a property or a key '2' in it. Integer 2 is silently
converted to string '2'.

Chapter 188: Call Python from C#

The documentation provides a sample implementation of the inter-
process communication between C# and Python scripts.

Section 188.1: Python script to be called by C# application

import sys
import json

# load input arguments from the text file

filename = sys .argv[ 1 ]
with open ( filename ) as data_file:

input_args = json.loads( data_file.read() )

# cast strings to floats
x , y = [ float (input_args.get( key )) for key in [ 'x' , 'y' ] ]
print json.dumps( { 'sum' : x + y , 'subtract' : x - y } )

Section 188.2: C# code calling Python script

using MongoDB. Bson;

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;

namespace python_csharp {
class Program {
static void Main( string [] args) {
// full path to .py file
string pyScriptPath = "...../sum.py" ;
// convert input arguments to JSON string
BsonDocument argsBson = BsonDocument. Parse( "{ 'x' : '1', 'y' : '2' }" );

bool saveInputFile = false ;

string argsFile = string . Format ( "{0} \\ {1}.txt" , Path . GetDirectoryName
pyScriptPath ) , Guid . NewGuid ());

string outputString = null ;

// create new process start info
ProcessStartInfo prcStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo {

// full path of the Python interpreter 'python.exe'

FileName = "python.exe" , // string.Format(@"""{0}""", "python.exe"),
UseShellExecute = false ,
RedirectStandardOutput = true ,
CreateNoWindow = false

};

try {
// write input arguments to .txt file
using ( StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter( argsFile))

{ sw. WriteLine( argsBson);

prcStartInfo. Arguments = string . Format( "{0} {1}" , string . Format(
@"""{0}""" ,

pyScriptPath ) , string . Format( @"""{0}""" , argsFile));

}
// start process
using ( Process process = Process. Start( prcStartInfo))
{

// read standard output JSON string

using ( StreamReader myStreamReader = process. StandardOutput) {

outputString = myStreamReader . ReadLine (); process . WaitForExit ();

}
}
}
finally
{

// delete/save temporary .txt file if (! saveInputFile)

{

File . Delete( argsFile); }

}
Console. WriteLine( outputString);

}
}
}

Chapter 189: ctypes

ctypes is a python built-in library that invokes exported functions from
native compiled libraries. Note: Since this library handles compiled code,
it is relatively OS dependent.

Section 189.1: ctypes arrays

As any good C programmer knows, a single value won't get you that far.
What will really get us going are arrays!
>>> c_int * 16
< class '__main__.c_long_Array_16' >
This is not an actual array, but it's pretty darn close! We created a class
that denotes an array of 16 int s.
Now all we need to do is to initialize it:

>>> arr = (c_int * 16 )(*range (16 ))

>>> arr
< __main__ .c_long_Array_16 object at 0xbaddcafe >
Now arr is an actual array that contains the numbers from 0 to 15.
They can be accessed just like any list:

>>> arr[5 ]
5
>>> arr[5 ] = 20
>>> arr[5 ]
20

And just like any other ctypes object, it also has a size and a location:

>>> sizeof(arr)
64 # sizeof(c_int) * 16
>>> hex (addressof(arr))
'0xc000l0ff'

Section 189.2: Wrapping functions for ctypes

In some cases, a C function accepts a function pointer. As avid ctypes
users, we would like to use those functions, and even pass python
function as arguments.
Let's define a function:
>>> def max (x , y):
return x if x >= y else y
Now, that function takes two arguments and returns a result of the same
type. For the sake of the example, let's assume that type is an int.
Like we did on the array example, we can define an object that denotes
that prototype:
>>> CFUNCTYPE(c_int , c_int , c_int)
< CFunctionType object at 0xdeadbeef >
That prototype denotes a function that returns an c_int (the first
argument), and accepts two c_int arguments (the other arguments).
Now let's wrap the function:
>>> CFUNCTYPE(c_int , c_int , c_int)( max ) < CFunctionType object at
0xdeadbeef >
Function prototypes have on more usage: They can wrap ctypes function
(like libc.ntohl) and verify that the correct arguments are used when
invoking the function.

>>> libc.ntohl() # garbage in - garbage out

>>> CFUNCTYPE(c_int, c_int)(libc.ntohl)()
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module >

TypeError : this function takes at least 1 argument ( 0 given)

Section 189.3: Basic usage

Let's say we want to use libc's ntohl function.

First, we must load libc.so:

>>> from ctypes import *

>>> libc = cdll.LoadLibrary('libc.so.6' ) >>> libc
< CDLL 'libc.so.6' , handle baadf00d at 0xdeadbeef >

Then, we get the function object:

>>> ntohl = libc.ntohl

>>> ntohl
< _FuncPtr object at 0xbaadf00d >

And now, we can simply invoke the function:

>>> ntohl(0x6C ) 1811939328

>>> hex (_)
'0x6c000000'

Which does exactly what we expect it to do.

Section 189.4: Common pitfalls

Failing to load a file
The first possible error is failing to load the library. In that case an
OSError is usually raised.
This is either because the file doesn't exists (or can't be found by the
OS):

>>> cdll.LoadLibrary("foobar.so" )
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/ctypes/__init__.py" , line 425 , in LoadLibrary

return self ._dlltype(name)
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/ctypes/__init__.py" , line 347 , in __init__ self
._handle = _dlopen(self ._name, mode)
OSError : foobar.so: cannot open shared object file : No such file or
directory

As you can see, the error is clear and pretty indicative.

The second reason is that the file is found, but is not of the correct
format.

>>> cdll.LoadLibrary("libc.so" )
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/ctypes/__init__.py" , line 425 , in LoadLibrary

return self ._dlltype(name)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/ctypes/__init__.py" , line 347 , in __init__ self

._handle = _dlopen(self ._name, mode)
OSError : /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so: invalid ELF header

In this case, the file is a script file and not a .so file. This might also
happen when trying to open a .dll file on a Linux machine or a 64bit file
on a 32bit python interpreter. As you can see, in this case the error is a
bit more vague, and requires some digging around.

Failing to access a function

Assuming we successfully loaded the .so file, we then need to access our
function like we've done on the first example.
When a non-existing function is used, an AttributeError is raised:
>>> libc.foo
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>" , line 1 , in < module>
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/ctypes/__init__.py" , line 360 , in __getattr__

func = self . __getitem__ (name)

File "/usr/lib/python3.5/ctypes/__init__.py" , line 365 , in __getitem__ func

= self ._FuncPtr((name_or_ordinal, self ))
AttributeError : /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: undefined symbol : foo

Section 189.5: Basic ctypes object

The most basic object is an int:

>>> obj = ctypes.c_int(12 )

>>> obj
c_long(12 )

Now, obj refers to a chunk of memory containing the value 12.

That value can be accessed directly, and even modified:

>>> obj.value
12
>>> obj.value = 13 >>> obj
c_long(13 )

Since obj refers to a chunk of memory, we can also find out its size and
location:

>>> sizeof(obj)
4
>>> hex (addressof(obj)) '0xdeadbeef'

Section 189.6: Complex usage

Let's combine all of the examples above into one complex scenario: using
libc's lfind function.
For more details about the function, read the man page . I urge you to
read it before going on.
First, we'll define the proper prototypes:
>>> compar_proto = CFUNCTYPE(c_int , POINTER(c_int) ,
POINTER(c_int))
>>> lfind_proto = CFUNCTYPE(c_void_p , c_void_p , c_void_p ,
POINTER(c_uint) , c_uint , compar_proto)
Then, let's create the variables:

>>> key = c_int(12 )

>>> arr = (c_int * 16 )(*range (16 ))
>>> nmemb = c_uint(16 )

And now we define the comparison function:

>>> def compar(x , y):
return x.contents.value - y.contents.value
Notice that x, and y are POINTER(c_int), so we need to dereference
them and take their values in order to actually compare the value stored
in the memory.
Now we can combine everything together:
>>> lfind = lfind_proto(libc.lfind)
>>> ptr = lfind(byref(key) , byref(arr) , byref(nmemb) , sizeof(c_int) ,
compar_proto(compar))
ptr is the returned void pointer. If key wasn't found in arr, the value
would be None , but in this case we got a valid value.
Now we can convert it and access the value:
>>> cast(ptr , POINTER(c_int)).contents
c_long( 12 )
Also, we can see that ptr points to the correct value inside arr:
>>> addressof(arr) + 12 * sizeof(c_int) == ptr
True

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Today →
Chapter 190: Writing extensions
Section 190.1: Hello World with C Extension

The following C source file (which we will call hello.c for demonstration
purposes) produces an extension module named hello that contains a
single function greet():
#include <Python.h>
#include <stdio.h>

#if PY_MAJOR_VERSION >= 3

#define IS_PY3K
#endif

static PyObject *hello_greet(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)

{
const char *input;
if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "s" , &input)) { return NULL ;
}
printf ("%s" , input);
Py_RETURN_NONE;
}

static PyMethodDef HelloMethods[] = {

{ "greet" , hello_greet, METH_VARARGS, "Greet the user" }, { NULL ,
NULL , 0, NULL }

};
#ifdef IS_PY3K
static struct PyModuleDef hellomodule = {
PyModuleDef_HEAD_INIT, "hello" , NULL , -1, HelloMethods } ;
PyMODINIT_FUNC PyInit_hello( void )

{
return PyModule_Create(&hellomodule);
}
#else
PyMODINIT_FUNC inithello(void )
{
(void ) Py_InitModule("hello" , HelloMethods);
}
#endif

To compile the file with the gcc compiler, run the following command in
your favourite terminal:
gcc /path/to/your/ file /hello.c -o /path/to/your/ file /hello
To execute the greet() function that we wrote earlier, create a file in the
same directory, and call it hello.py
import hello # imports the compiled library
hello.greet( "Hello!" ) # runs the greet() function with "Hello!" as an
argument

Section 190.2: C Extension Using c++ and Boost

This is a basic example of a C Extension using C++ and Boost .

C++ Code
C++ code put in hello.cpp:

#include <boost/python/module.hpp> #include <boost/python/list.hpp>

#include <boost/python/class.hpp> #include <boost/python/def.hpp>

// Return a hello world string. std:: string get_hello_function() {

return "Hello world!" ; }

// hello class that can return a list of count hello world strings. class
hello_class
{
public :

// Taking the greeting message in the constructor. hello_class(std :: string

message) : _message(message) {}

// Returns the message count times in a python list. boost:: python :: list
as_list(int count)
{

boost :: python :: list res ;

for ( int i = 0 ; i < count ; ++i) { res. append (_message) ;
}
return res ;
}

private :
std:: string _message;
};

// Defining a python module naming it to "hello".

BOOST_PYTHON_MODULE(hello)
{

// Here you declare what functions and classes that should be exposed on
the module.
// The get_hello_function exposed to python as a function. boost :: python
def ( "get_hello" , get_hello_function) ;

// The hello_class exposed to python as a class.

boost:: python :: class_ < hello_class> ("Hello" , boost:: python :: init < std
string > ()) .def ("as_list" , &hello_class:: as_list )
;
}

To compile this into a python module you will need the python headers
and the boost libraries. This example was made on Ubuntu 12.04 using
python 3.4 and gcc. Boost is supported on many platforms. In case of
Ubuntu the needed packages was installed using:

sudo apt-get install gcc libboost-dev libpython3.4-dev

Compiling the source file into a .so-file that can later be imported as a
module provided it is on the python path:
gcc -shared -o hello.so -fPIC -I/usr/include/python3.4 hello.cpp -
lboost_python-py34 -lboost_system
-l:libpython3.4m.so
The python code in the file example.py:
import hello
print (hello.get_hello())
h = hello.Hello( "World hello!" ) print (h.as_list( 3 ))
Then python3 example.py will give the following output:
Hello world !
[ 'World hello!' , 'World hello!' , 'World hello!' ]

Section 190.3: Passing an open file to C Extensions

Pass an open file object from Python to C extension code.
You can convert the file to an integer file descriptor using
PyObject_AsFileDescriptor function:

PyObject *fobj ;
int fd = PyObject_AsFileDescriptor(fobj);
if (fd < 0 ){

return NULL ;
}
To convert an integer file descriptor back into a python object, use
PyFile_FromFd.
int fd ; /* Existing file descriptor */
PyObject *fobj = PyFile_FromFd(fd , "filename" , "r" , - 1 , NULL , NULL
NULL , 1 ) ;

Chapter 191: Python Lex-Yacc

PLY is a pure-Python implementation of the popular compiler
construction tools lex and yacc.

Section 191.1: Getting Started with PLY

To install PLY on your machine for python2/3, follow the steps outlined
below:

1. Download the source code from here .

2. Unzip the downloaded zip file
3. Navigate into the unzipped ply3.10 folder
4. Run the following command in your terminal: python setup.py install

If you completed all the above, you should now be able to use the PLY
module. You can test it out by opening a python interpreter and typing
import ply.lex.
Note: Do not use pip to install PLY, it will install a broken distribution on
your machine.

Section 191.2: The "Hello, World!" of PLY - A Simple

Calculator
Let's demonstrate the power of PLY with a simple example: this
program will take an arithmetic expression as a string input, and
attempt to solve it.
Open up your favourite editor and copy the following code:
from ply import lex
import ply.yacc as yacc

tokens = (
'PLUS' ,
'MINUS' ,
'TIMES' ,
'DIV' ,
'LPAREN' ,
'RPAREN' ,
'NUMBER' ,
)
t_ignore = ' \t '

t_PLUS = r' \+ '

t_MINUS = r'-'
t_TIMES = r' \* '
t_DIV = r'/'
t_LPAREN = r' \( '
t_RPAREN = r' \) '

def t_NUMBER( t ) :
r'[0-9]+'
t.value = int ( t.value )
return t

def t_newline( t ):
r' \n +'
t.lexer.lineno += len ( t.value )

def t_error( t ):
print ( "Invalid Token:" , t.value[ 0 ]) t.lexer.skip( 1 )
lexer = lex.lex()

precedence = (
( 'left' , 'PLUS' , 'MINUS' ), ( 'left' , 'TIMES' , 'DIV' ), ( 'nonassoc' ,
'UMINUS' )

def p_add( p ) :
'expr : expr PLUS expr' p[0 ] = p[1 ] + p[3 ]

def p_sub( p ) :
'expr : expr MINUS expr' p[0 ] = p[1 ] - p[3 ]

def p_expr2uminus( p ) :
'expr : MINUS expr %prec UMINUS' p[0 ] = - p[2 ]
def p_mult_div( p ) :
'''expr : expr TIMES expr | expr DIV expr'''

if p[2 ] == '*' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] * p[3 ]
else :
if p[3 ] == 0 :
print ("Can't divide by 0" )
raise ZeroDivisionError ('integer division by 0' ) p[0 ] = p[1 ] / p[3 ]

def p_expr2NUM( p ) : 'expr : NUMBER' p[0 ] = p[1 ]

def p_parens( p ) :
'expr : LPAREN expr RPAREN' p[0 ] = p[2 ]

def p_error( p ):
print ( "Syntax error in input!" )
parser = yacc.yacc()
res = parser .parse( "-4*-(3-5)" ) # the input print (res)
Save this file as calc.py and run it.
Output:
-8 Which is the right answer for - 4 * - ( 3 - 5 ).

Section 191.3: Part 1: Tokenizing Input with Lex

There are two steps that the code from example 1 carried out: one was
tokenizing the input, which means it looked for symbols that constitute
the arithmetic expression, and the second step was parsing , which
involves analysing the extracted tokens and evaluating the result.

This section provides a simple example of how to tokenize user input, and
then breaks it down line by line.
import ply.lex as lex

# List of token names. This is always required tokens = [

'NUMBER' ,
'PLUS' ,
'MINUS' ,
'TIMES' ,
'DIVIDE' ,
'LPAREN' ,
'RPAREN' ,
]

# Regular expression rules for simple tokens t_PLUS = r' \+ '

t_MINUS = r'-'
t_TIMES = r' \* '
t_DIVIDE = r'/'
t_LPAREN = r' \( '
t_RPAREN = r' \) '

# A regular expression rule with some action code def t_NUMBER(t):

r' \d +'
t.value = int (t.value)
return t

# Define a rule so we can track line numbers def t_newline(t):

r' \n +'
t.lexer.lineno += len (t.value)

# A string containing ignored characters (spaces and tabs) t_ignore = ' \t '

# Error handling rule

def t_error(t):
print ("Illegal character '%s'" % t.value[0 ])
t.lexer.skip(1 )

# Build the lexer lexer = lex.lex()

# Give the lexer some input lexer. input (data)

# Tokenize
while True :
tok = lexer.token ()
if not tok:
break # No more input
print (tok)
Save this file as calclex.py. We'll be using this when building our Yacc
parser.
Breakdown
1. Import the module using import ply.lex
2. All lexers must provide a list called tokens that defines all of the
possible token names that can be produced by the lexer. This list is
always required.

tokens = [ 'NUMBER' , 'PLUS' , 'MINUS' , 'TIMES' , 'DIVIDE' , 'LPAREN'

'RPAREN' ,

]
tokens could also be a tuple of strings (rather than a string), where each
string denotes a token as before.
3. The regex rule for each string may be defined either as a string or as a
function. In either case, the variable name should be prefixed by t_ to
denote it is a rule for matching tokens.
For simple tokens, the regular expression can be specified as strings:
t_PLUS = r ' \+ '
If some kind of action needs to be performed, a token rule can be
specified as a function.

def t_NUMBER(t):
r' \d +'
t.value = int (t.value) return t

Note, the rule is specified as a doc string within the function. The
function accepts one argument which is an instance of LexToken,
performs some action and then returns back the argument.
If you want to use an external string as the regex rule for the function
instead of specifying a doc string, consider the following example:
@ TOKEN(identifier) # identifier is a string holding the regex def t_ID(t):
... # actions
An instance of LexToken object (let's call this object t) has the following
attributes:

1. t.type which is the token type (as a string) (eg: 'NUMBER' , 'PLUS' ,
etc). By default, t.type is set to the name following the t_ prefix.
2. t.value which is the lexeme (the actual text matched)
3. t.lineno which is the current line number (this is not automatically
updated, as the lexer knows nothing of line numbers). Update lineno
using a function called t_newline.

def t_newline(t):
r' \n +'
t.lexer.lineno += len (t.value)

4. t.lexpos which is the position of the token relative to the beginning of

the input text. If nothing is returned from a regex rule function, the
token is discarded. If you want to discard a token, you can alternatively
add t_ignore_ prefix to a regex rule variable instead of defining a
function for the same rule.

def t_COMMENT(t):
r' \# .*'
pass
# No return value. Token discarded

...Is the same as:

t_ignore_COMMENT = r ' \# .*'
This is of course invalid if you're carrying out some action when you see
a comment. In which case, use a function to define the regex rule.
If you haven't defined a token for some characters but still want to
ignore it, use t_ignore = "<characters to ignore>" (these prefixes are
necessary):
t_ignore_COMMENT = r ' \# .*'
t_ignore = ' \t ' # ignores spaces and tabs
When building the master regex, lex will add the regexes specified in the
file as follows:

1. Tokens defined by functions are added in the same order as they

appear in the file.
2. Tokens defined by strings are added in decreasing order of the string
length of the string defining the regex for that token.

If you are matching == and = in the same file, take advantage of these
rules.
Literals are tokens that are returned as they are. Both t. type and t.value
will be set to the character itself. Define a list of literals as such:
literals = [ '+' , '-' , '*' , '/' ]
or,
literals = "+-*/"
It is possible to write token functions that perform additional actions
when literals are matched. However, you'll need to set the token type
appropriately. For example:
literals = [ '{' , '}' ]

def t_lbrace(t):
r' \{ '
t.type = '{' # Set token type to the expected literal (ABSOLUTE MUST if this
is a

literal)
return t
Handle errors with t_error function.

# Error handling rule

def t_error(t):
print ("Illegal character '%s'" % t.value[0 ])
t.lexer.skip(1 ) # skip the illegal token (don't process it)

In general, t.lexer.skip(n) skips n characters in the input string.

4. Final preparations:
Build the lexer using lexer = lex.lex().
You can also put everything inside a class and call use instance of the
class to define the lexer. Eg:
import ply.lex as lex
class MyLexer( object ):
... # everything relating to token rules and error handling comes here as
usual
# Build the lexer
def build( self , **kwargs):
self .lexer = lex.lex(module = self , **kwargs)
def test (self , data):
self .lexer.input (data)
for token in self .lexer.token ():

print ( token )
# Build the lexer and try it out

m = MyLexer()
m.build() # Build the lexer m.test ("3 + 4" ) #

Provide input using lexer. input (data) where data is a string

To get the tokens, use lexer. token () which returns tokens matched. You
can iterate over lexer in a loop as in:
for i in lexer: print (i)

Section 191.4: Part 2: Parsing Tokenized Input with Yacc

This section explains how the tokenized input from Part 1 is processed -
it is done using Context Free Grammars (CFGs). The grammar must be
specified, and the tokens are processed according to the grammar. Under
the hood, the parser uses an LALR parser.

# Yacc example
import ply.yacc as yacc
# Get the token map from the lexer. This is required. from calclex import
tokens
def p_expression_plus(p):
'expression : expression PLUS term' p[ 0 ] = p[ 1 ] + p[ 3 ]

def p_expression_minus(p):
'expression : expression MINUS term' p[0 ] = p[1 ] - p[3 ]

def p_expression_term(p): 'expression : term' p[0 ] = p[1 ]

def p_term_times(p):
'term : term TIMES factor' p[0 ] = p[1 ] * p[3 ]

def p_term_div(p):
'term : term DIVIDE factor' p[0 ] = p[1 ] / p[3 ]

def p_term_factor(p): 'term : factor' p[0 ] = p[1 ]

def p_factor_num(p): 'factor : NUMBER' p[0 ] = p[1 ]

def p_factor_expr(p):
'factor : LPAREN expression RPAREN' p[0 ] = p[2 ]

# Error rule for syntax errors def p_error(p):

print ( "Syntax error in input!" ) # Build the parser parser = yacc.yacc()
while True : try :
s = raw_input ( 'calc > ' )

except EOFError :
break
if not s: continue
result = parser .parse(s)
print (result)

Breakdown

Each grammar rule is defined by a function where the docstring to that

function contains the appropriate context-free grammar specification.
The statements that make up the function body implement the semantic
actions of the rule. Each function accepts a single argument p that is a
sequence containing the values of each grammar symbol in the
corresponding rule. The values of p[i] are mapped to grammar symbols
as shown here:

def p_expression_plus(p):
'expression : expression PLUS term' # ^ ^ ^ ^ # p[0] p[1] p[2] p[3]

p[ 0 ] = p[ 1 ] + p[ 3 ]
For tokens, the "value" of the corresponding p[i] is the same as the
p.value attribute assigned in the lexer module. So, PLUS will have the
value +.
For non-terminals, the value is determined by whatever is placed in p[0
]. If nothing is placed, the value is None. Also, p[1 ] is not the same as p[3
], since p is not a simple list (p[1 ] can specify embedded actions (not
discussed here)).

Note that the function can have any name, as long as it is preceded by p_.
The p_error(p) rule is defined to catch syntax errors (same as yyerror in
yacc/bison).
Multiple grammar rules can be combined into a single function, which is
a good idea if productions have a similar structure.
def p_binary_operators(p):
'''expression : expression PLUS term

| expression MINUS term term : term TIMES factor

| term DIVIDE factor''' if p[2 ] == '+' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] + p[3 ]
elif p[2 ] == '-' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] - p[3 ]
elif p[2 ] == '*' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] * p[3 ]
elif p[2 ] == '/' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] / p[3 ]

Character literals can be used instead of tokens.

def p_binary_operators(p):
'''expression : expression '+' term

| expression '-' term term : term '*' factor

| term '/' factor''' if p[2 ] == '+' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] + p[3 ]
elif p[2 ] == '-' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] - p[3 ]
elif p[2 ] == '*' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] * p[3 ]
elif p[2 ] == '/' :
p[0 ] = p[1 ] / p[3 ]

Of course, the literals must be specified in the lexer module.

Empty productions have the form '''symbol : '''
To explicitly set the start symbol, use start = 'foo' , where foo is some non-
terminal.
Setting precedence and associativity can be done using the precedence
variable.

precedence = (
('nonassoc' , 'LESSTHAN' , 'GREATERTHAN' ), # Nonassociative
operators ('left' , 'PLUS' , 'MINUS' ),
('left' , 'TIMES' , 'DIVIDE' ),
('right' , 'UMINUS' ), # Unary minus operator

)
Tokens are ordered from lowest to highest precedence. nonassoc means
that those tokens do not associate. This means that something like a < b <
is illegal whereas a < b is still legal.
parser .out is a debugging file that is created when the yacc program is
executed for the first time. Whenever a shift/reduce conflict occurs, the
parser always shifts.

Chapter 192: Unit Testing

Section 192.1: Test Setup and Teardown within a
unittest.TestCase

Sometimes we want to prepare a context for each test to be run under.

The setUp method is run prior to each test in the class. tearDown is run
at the end of every test. These methods are optional. Remember that
TestCases are often used in cooperative multiple inheritance so you
should be careful to always call super in these methods so that base
class's setUp and tearDown methods also get called. The base
implementation of TestCase provides empty setUp and tearDown
methods so that they can be called without raising exceptions:

import unittest

class SomeTest(unittest .TestCase): def setUp(self ):

super (SomeTest, self ).setUp() self .mock_data = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]

def test ( self ):

self .assertEqual( len ( self .mock_data) , 5 )

def tearDown(self ):
super (SomeTest, self ).tearDown() self .mock_data = []

if __name__ == '__main__' : unittest .main()

Note that in python2.7+, there is also the addCleanup method that

registers functions to be called after the test is run. In contrast to
tearDown which only gets called if setUp succeeds, functions registered
via addCleanup will be called even in the event of an unhandled
exception in setUp. As a concrete example, this method can frequently be
seen removing various mocks that were registered while the test was
running:

import unittest import some_module

class SomeOtherTest( unittest .TestCase): def setUp( self ):
super (SomeOtherTest , self ).setUp()

# Replace `some_module.method` with a `mock.Mock` my_patch =

mock.patch.object (some_module, 'method' ) my_patch.start()

# When the test finishes running, put the original method back. self
.addCleanup(my_patch.stop)
Another benefit of registering cleanups this way is that it allows the
programmer to put the cleanup code next to the setup code and it
protects you in the event that a subclasser forgets to call super in
tearDown.

Section 192.2: Asserting on Exceptions

You can test that a function throws an exception with the built-in
unittest through two different methods.
Using a context manager
def division_function(dividend , divisor): return dividend / divisor
class MyTestCase( unittest .TestCase):
def test_using_context_manager( self ): with self .assertRaises(
ZeroDivisionError ): x = division_function( 1 , 0 )
This will run the code inside of the context manager and, if it succeeds, it
will fail the test because the exception was not raised. If the code raises
an exception of the correct type, the test will continue.
You can also get the content of the raised exception if you want to
execute additional assertions against it.
class MyTestCase( unittest .TestCase):
def test_using_context_manager( self ):
with self .assertRaises( ZeroDivisionError ) as ex: x = division_function( 1
self .assertEqual(ex.message , 'integer division or modulo by zero' )
By providing a callable function

def division_function(dividend, divisor): """

Dividing two numbers.

:type dividend: int :type divisor: int

:raises: ZeroDivisionError if divisor is zero (0). :rtype: int

"""
return dividend / divisor

class MyTestCase( unittest .TestCase):

def test_passing_function( self ):
self .assertRaises( ZeroDivisionError , division_function , 1 , 0 )

The exception to check for must be the first parameter, and a callable
function must be passed as the second parameter. Any other parameters
specified will be passed directly to the function that is being called,
allowing you to specify the parameters that trigger the exception.

Section 192.3: Testing Exceptions

Programs throw errors when for instance wrong input is given. Because
of this, one needs to make sure that an error is thrown when actual
wrong input is given. Because of that we need to check for an exact
exception, for this example we will use the following exception:
class WrongInputException( Exception ): pass
This exception is raised when wrong input is given, in the following
context where we always expect a number as text input.
def convert2number(random_input): try :
my_input = int (random_input)

except ValueError :
raise WrongInputException("Expected an integer!" )
return my_input

To check whether an exception has been raised, we use assertRaises to

check for that exception. assertRaises can be used in two ways:

1. Using the regular function call. The first argument takes the exception
type, second a callable (usually a function) and the rest of arguments are
passed to this callable.
2. Using a with clause, giving only the exception type to the function.
This has as advantage that more code can be executed, but should be
used with care since multiple functions can use the same exception which
can be problematic. An example: with
self.assertRaises(WrongInputException): convert2number("not a
number")

This first has been implemented in the following test case:

import unittest
class ExceptionTestCase( unittest .TestCase):
def test_wrong_input_string( self ):
self .assertRaises(WrongInputException , convert2number , "not a
number" )

def test_correct_input(self ): try :

result = convert2number("56" ) self .assertIsInstance(result, int )

except WrongInputException:
self .fail()

There also may be a need to check for an exception which should not
have been thrown. However, a test will automatically fail when an
exception is thrown and thus may not be necessary at all. Just to show
the options, the second test method shows a case on how one can check
for an exception not to be thrown. Basically, this is catching the
exception and then failing the test using the fail method.

Section 192.4: Choosing Assertions Within Unittests

While Python has an assert statement , the Python unit testing framework
has better assertions specialized for tests: they are more informative on
failures, and do not depend on the execution's debug mode.
Perhaps the simplest assertion is assertTrue, which can be used like this:
import unittest
class SimplisticTest( unittest .TestCase):
def test_basic( self ):
self .assertTrue( 1 + 1 == 2 )
This will run fine, but replacing the line above with
self .assertTrue( 1 + 1 == 3 )

will fail. The assertTrue assertion is quite likely the most general
assertion, as anything tested can be cast as some boolean condition, but
often there are better alternatives. When testing for equality, as above, it
is better to write

self .assertEqual( 1 + 1 , 3 )
When the former fails, the message is
================================================================
FAIL: test (__main__.TruthTest)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "stuff.py", line 6, in test
self.assertTrue(1 + 1 == 3)
AssertionError: False is not true
but when the latter fails, the message is
================================================================
FAIL: test (__main__.TruthTest)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "stuff.py", line 6, in test
self.assertEqual(1 + 1, 3) AssertionError: 2 != 3
which is more informative (it actually evaluated the result of the left
hand side).

You can find the list of assertions in the standard documentation . In

general, it is a good idea to choose the assertion that is the most
specifically fitting the condition. Thus, as shown above, for asserting that
1 + 1 == 2 it is better to use assertEqual than assertTrue. Similarly, for
asserting that a is None , it is better to use assertIsNone than assertEqual.

Note also that the assertions have negative forms. Thus assertEqual has
its negative counterpart assertNotEqual, and assertIsNone has its
negative counterpart assertIsNotNone. Once again, using the negative
counterparts when appropriate, will lead to clearer error messages.

Section 192.5: Unit tests with pytest

installing pytest:
pip install pytest
getting the tests ready:
mkdir tests
touch tests/test_docker.py
Functions to test in docker_something/helpers.py:
from subprocess import Popen , PIPE
# this Popen is monkeypatched with the fixture `all_popens`
def copy_file_to_docker(src , dest): try :
result = Popen([ 'docker' , 'cp' , src , 'something_cont:{}' .format(dest)] , stdout
= PIPE ,

stderr = PIPE)
err = result.stderr.read()
if err:

raise Exception (err)

except Exception as e:
print (e)
return result

def docker_exec_something(something_file_string):
fl = Popen(["docker" , "exec" , "-i" , "something_cont" , "something" ],
stdin= PIPE, stdout= PIPE,
stderr= PIPE)
fl .stdin.write(something_file_string)
fl .stdin.close()
err = fl .stderr.read()
fl .stderr.close()
if err:
print (err)
exit()
result = fl .stdout.read()
print (result)

The test imports test_docker.py:

import os
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile import pytest
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

from docker_something import helpers

copy_file_to_docker = helpers.copy_file_to_docker
docker_exec_something = helpers.docker_exec_something

mocking a file like object in test_docker.py:

class MockBytes():
'''Used to collect bytes '''
all_read = []
all_write = []
all_close = []

def read(self , *args, **kwargs):

# print('read', args, kwargs, dir(self)) self .all_read.append((self , args,
kwargs))
def write(self , *args, **kwargs):
# print('wrote', args, kwargs)
self .all_write.append((self , args, kwargs))

def close(self , *args, **kwargs):

# print('closed', self, args, kwargs) self .all_close.append((self , args,
kwargs))

def get_all_mock_bytes( self ):

return self .all_read , self .all_write , self .all_close
Monkey patching with pytest in test_docker.py:
@ pytest.fixture
def all_popens(monkeypatch):
'''This fixture overrides / mocks the builtin Popen and replaces stdin,
stdout, stderr with a MockBytes object

note: monkeypatch is magically imported '''

all_popens = []

class MockPopen(object ):
def __init__ (self , args, stdout= None , stdin= None , stderr= None ):
all_popens.append(self )
self .args = args
self .byte_collection = MockBytes()
self .stdin = self .byte_collection
self .stdout = self .byte_collection
self .stderr = self .byte_collection
pass

monkeypatch. setattr (helpers , 'Popen' , MockPopen)

return all_popens
Example tests, must start with the prefix test_ in the test_docker.py file:

def test_docker_install():
p = Popen(['which' , 'docker' ], stdout= PIPE, stderr= PIPE) result =
p.stdout.read()
assert 'bin/docker' in result
def test_copy_file_to_docker(all_popens):
result = copy_file_to_docker('asdf' , 'asdf' )
collected_popen = all_popens.pop()
mock_read, mock_write, mock_close =
collected_popen.byte_collection.get_all_mock_bytes() assert mock_read
assert result.args == ['docker' , 'cp' , 'asdf' , 'something_cont:asdf' ]

def test_docker_exec_something(all_popens):
docker_exec_something(something_file_string)

collected_popen = all_popens.pop()
mock_read, mock_write, mock_close =
collected_popen.byte_collection.get_all_mock_bytes() assert len
(mock_read) == 3
something_template_stdin = mock_write[0 ][1 ][0 ]
these = [os .environ['USER' ], os .environ['password_prod' ],
'table_name_here' , 'test_vdm' ,

'col_a' , 'col_b' , '/tmp/test.tsv' ]

assert all ([x in something_template_stdin for x in these])
running the tests one at a time:

py. test -k test_docker_install tests py.test -k test_copy_file_to_docker

tests py.test -k test_docker_exec_something tests

running all the tests in the tests folder: py. test -k test_ tests

Section 192.6: Mocking functions with

unittest.mock.create_autospec
One way to mock a function is to use the create_autospec function, which
will mock out an object according to its specs. With functions, we can use
this to ensure that they are called appropriately.
With a function multiply in custom_math.py:
def multiply(a , b):
return a * b
And a function multiples_of in process_math.py:
from custom_math import multiply

def multiples_of(integer, *args, num_multiples= 0 , **kwargs): """

:rtype: list
"""
multiples = []

for x in range (1 , num_multiples + 1 ):

"""
Passing in args and kwargs here will only raise TypeError if values were
passed to multiples_of function, otherwise they are ignored. This way we
can test that multiples_of is used correctly. This is here for an illustration
of how create_autospec works. Not recommended for production code.
"""
multiple = multiply(integer, x, *args, **kwargs)
multiples.append(multiple)

return multiples
We can test multiples_of alone by mocking out multiply. The below
example uses the Python standard library unittest, but this can be used
with other testing frameworks as well, like pytest or nose:
from unittest .mock import create_autospec import unittest

# we import the entire module so we can mock out multiply import

custom_math
custom_math.multiply = create_autospec(custom_math.multiply) from
process_math import multiples_of

class TestCustomMath(unittest .TestCase):

def test_multiples_of(self ):
multiples = multiples_of(3 , num_multiples= 1 )
custom_math.multiply.assert_called_with(3 , 1 )

def test_multiples_of_with_bad_inputs( self ):

with self .assertRaises( TypeError ) as e:
multiples_of( 1 , "extra arg" , num_multiples = 1 ) # this should raise a
TypeError
Chapter 193: py.test
Section 193.1: Setting up py.test
py. test is one of several third party testing libraries that are available for
Python. It can be installed using pip with
pip install pytest
The Code to Test
Say we are testing an addition function in projectroot/module/ code .py:
# projectroot/module/code.py
def add(a , b):
return a + b
The Testing Code
We create a test file in projectroot/tests/test_code.py. The file must begin
with test_ to be recognized as a testing file.
# projectroot/tests/test_code.py from module import code
def test_add():
assert code .add( 1 , 2 ) == 3
Running The Test
From projectroot we simply run py. test :

# ensure we have the modules

$ touch tests/__init__ .py
$ touch module/__init__ .py
$ py.test
================================================== test
session starts
===================================================
platform darwin -- Python 2.7.10, pytest-2.9.2, py-1.4.31, pluggy-0.3.1
rootdir: /projectroot, inifile:
collected 1 items

tests/test_code.py .
================================================ 1 passed
in 0.01 seconds
================================================
Section 193.2: Intro to Test Fixtures

More complicated tests sometimes need to have things set up before you
run the code you want to test. It is possible to do this in the test function
itself, but then you end up with large test functions doing so much that it
is difficult to tell where the setup stops and the test begins. You can also
get a lot of duplicate setup code between your various test functions.
Our code file:

# projectroot/module/stuff.py class Stuff( object ):

def prep( self ):
self .foo = 1
self .bar = 2
Our test file:

# projectroot/tests/test_stuff.py import pytest

from module import stuff

def test_foo_updates():
my_stuff = stuff.Stuff() my_stuff.prep()
assert 1 == my_stuff.foo my_stuff.foo = 30000
assert my_stuff.foo == 30000

def test_bar_updates():
my_stuff = stuff.Stuff() my_stuff.prep()
assert 2 == my_stuff.bar my_stuff.bar = 42
assert 42 == my_stuff.bar

These are pretty simple examples, but if our Stuff object needed a lot
more setup, it would get unwieldy. We see that there is some duplicated
code between our test cases, so let's refactor that into a separate function
first.

# projectroot/tests/test_stuff.py import pytest

from module import stuff

def get_prepped_stuff(): my_stuff = stuff.Stuff() my_stuff.prep()

return my_stuff
def test_foo_updates():
my_stuff = get_prepped_stuff() assert 1 == my_stuff.foo my_stuff.foo =
30000
assert my_stuff.foo == 30000

def test_bar_updates():
my_stuff = get_prepped_stuff() assert 2 == my_stuff.bar my_stuff.bar = 42
assert 42 == my_stuff.bar

This looks better but we still have the my_stuff = get_prepped_stuff() call
cluttering up our test functions.
py.test fixtures to the rescue!
Fixtures are much more powerful and flexible versions of test setup
functions. They can do a lot more than we're leveraging here, but we'll
take it one step at a time.

First we change get_prepped_stuff to a fixture called prepped_stuff. You

want to name your fixtures with nouns rather than verbs because of how
the fixtures will end up being used in the test functions themselves later.
The @ pytest.fixture indicates that this specific function should be
handled as a fixture rather than a regular function.

@ pytest.fixture
def prepped_stuff():
my_stuff = stuff.Stuff()
my_stuff.prep()
return my_stuff

Now we should update the test functions so that they use the fixture. This
is done by adding a parameter to their definition that exactly matches
the fixture name. When py.test executes, it will run the fixture before
running the test, then pass the return value of the fixture into the test
function through that parameter. (Note that fixtures don't need to return
a value; they can do other setup things instead, like calling an external
resource, arranging things on the filesystem, putting values in a
database, whatever the tests need for setup)

def test_foo_updates(prepped_stuff): my_stuff = prepped_stuff

assert 1 == my_stuff.foo
my_stuff.foo = 30000
assert my_stuff.foo == 30000

def test_bar_updates(prepped_stuff): my_stuff = prepped_stuff

assert 2 == my_stuff.bar
my_stuff.bar = 42
assert 42 == my_stuff.bar

Now you can see why we named it with a noun. but the my_stuff =
prepped_stuff line is pretty much useless, so let's just use prepped_stuff
directly instead.

def test_foo_updates(prepped_stuff): assert 1 == prepped_stuff.foo

prepped_stuff.foo = 30000
assert prepped_stuff.foo == 30000

def test_bar_updates(prepped_stuff): assert 2 == prepped_stuff.bar

prepped_stuff.bar = 42
assert 42 == prepped_stuff.bar

Now we're using fixtures! We can go further by changing the scope of

the fixture (so it only runs once per test module or test suite execution
session instead of once per test function), building fixtures that use other
fixtures, parametrizing the fixture (so that the fixture and all tests using
that fixture are run multiple times, once for each parameter given to the
fixture), fixtures that read values from the module that calls them... as
mentioned earlier, fixtures have a lot more power and flexibility than a
normal setup function.

Cleaning up after the tests are done.

Let's say our code has grown and our Stuff object now needs special
clean up.
# projectroot/module/stuff.py

class Stuff(object ): def prep(self ):

self .foo = 1
self .bar = 2
def finish(self ): self .foo = 0
self .bar = 0

We could add some code to call the clean up at the bottom of every test
function, but fixtures provide a better way to do this. If you add a
function to the fixture and register it as a finalizer, the code in the
finalizer function will get called after the test using the fixture is done. If
the scope of the fixture is larger than a single function (like module or
session), the finalizer will be executed after all the tests in scope are
completed, so after the module is done running or at the end of the entire
test running session.

@ pytest.fixture
def prepped_stuff(request): # we need to pass in the request to use
finalizers my_stuff = stuff.Stuff()
my_stuff.prep()
def fin(): # finalizer function
# do all the cleanup here
my_stuff.finish()
request.addfinalizer(fin) # register fin() as a finalizer
# you can do more setup here if you really want to
return my_stuff

Using the finalizer function inside a function can be a bit hard to

understand at first glance, especially when you have more complicated
fixtures. You can instead use a yield fixture to do the same thing with a
more human readable execution flow. The only real difference is that
instead of using return we use a yield at the part of the fixture where the
setup is done and control should go to a test function, then add all the
cleanup code after the yield . We also decorate it as a yield_fixture so
that py.test knows how to handle it.

@ pytest.yield_fixture
def prepped_stuff(): # it doesn't need request now! # do setup
my_stuff = stuff.Stuff()
my_stuff.prep()
# setup is done, pass control to the test functions
yield my_stuff
# do cleanup
my_stuff.finish()

And that concludes the Intro to Test Fixtures! For more information, see
the official py.test fixture documentation and the official yield fixture
documentation

Section 193.3: Failing Tests

A failing test will provide helpful output as to what went wrong:
# projectroot/tests/test_code.py
from module import code
def test_add__failing():
assert code .add( 10 , 11 ) == 33
Results:

$ py. test
================================================== test
session starts
===================================================
platform darwin -- Python 2.7.10, pytest-2.9.2, py-1.4.31, pluggy-0.3.1
rootdir: /projectroot, inifile:
collected 1 items

tests/test_code.py F

========================================================
FAILURES
========================================================
___________________________________________________
test_add__failing
____________________________________________________

def test_add__failing():
> assert code .add(10 , 11 ) == 33
E assert 21 == 33
E + where 21 = < function add at 0x105d4d6e0 > (10 , 11 ) E + where <
function add at 0x105d4d6e0 > = code .add
tests/test_code.py: 5 : AssertionError
================================================ 1 failed
in 0.01 seconds
================================================

Chapter 194: Profiling

Section 194.1: %%timeit and %timeit in IPython

Profiling string concatenation:

In [ 1 ]: import string

In [ 2 ]: %%timeit s= "" ; long_list= list (string .ascii_letters)*50 ....: for

substring in long_list:
....: s+= substring
....:

1000 loops , best of 3 : 570 us per loop

In [ 3 ]: %%timeit long_list= list (string .ascii_letters)*50

....: s= "" .join(long_list)
....:

100000 loops , best of 3 : 16.1 us per loop

Profiling loops over iterables and lists:
In [ 4 ]: % timeit for i in range ( 100000 ): pass 100 loops , best of 3 : 2.82
loop
In [ 5 ]: % timeit for i in list ( range ( 100000 )): pass 100 loops , best of 3 :
per loop

Section 194.2: Using cProfile (Preferred Profiler)

Python includes a profiler called cProfile. This is generally preferred

over using timeit.
It breaks down your entire script and for each method in your script it
tells you:
ncalls : The number of times a method was called
tottime: Total time spent in the given function (excluding time made in
calls to sub-functions) percall: Time spent per call. Or the quotient of
tottime divided by ncalls
cumtime: The cumulative time spent in this and all subfunctions (from
invocation till exit). This figure is accurate even for recursive functions.
percall: is the quotient of cumtime divided by primitive calls
filename:lineno(function): provides the respective data of each function

The cProfiler can be easily called on Command Line using:

$ python -m cProfile main.py
To sort the returned list of profiled methods by the time taken in the
method: $ python -m cProfile -s time main.py

Section 194.3: timeit() function

Profiling repetition of elements in an array
>>> import timeit

>>> timeit .timeit ('list(itertools.repeat("a", 100))' , 'import itertools' ,

number = 10000000 ) 10.997665435877963
>>> timeit .timeit ('["a"]*100' , number = 10000000 )
7.118789926862576

Section 194.4: timeit command line

Profiling concatenation of numbers

python -m timeit "'-'.join(str(n) for n in range(100))" 10000 loops , best of
29.2 usec per loop
python -m timeit "'-'.join(map(str,range(100)))" 100000 loops , best of 3 :
usec per loop

Section 194.5: line_profiler in command line

The source code with @profile directive before the function we want to
profile:
import requests
@ profile
def slow_func():
s = requests.session()
html= s.get("https://en.wikipedia.org/" ).text
sum ([pow (ord (x), 3.1 ) for x in list (html)])

for i in range ( 50 ):
slow_func()
Using kernprof command to calculate profiling line by line
$ kernprof -lv so6.py
Wrote profile results to so6.py.lprof Timer unit: 4.27654e-07 s

Total time: 22.6427 s

File: so6.py
Function: slow_func at line 4

Line # Hits Time Per Hit % Time Line Contents

==============================================================
4 @profile
5 def slow_func():
6 50 20729 414.6 0.0 s = requests.session()
7 50 47618627 952372.5 89.9 html=s.get("https://en.wikipedia.org/").text
8 50 5306958 106139.2 10.0 sum([pow(ord(x),3.1) for x in list(html)])

Page request is almost always slower than any calculation based on the
information on the page.

Chapter 195: Python speed of program

Section 195.1: Deque operations

A deque is a double-ended queue.

class Deque:
def __init__ ( self ):
self .items = []
def isEmpty( self ):
return self .items == []
def addFront( self , item):
self .items.append(item)
def addRear( self , item):
self .items.insert( 0 , item)
def removeFront( self ):
return self .items.pop()
def removeRear( self ):
return self .items.pop( 0 )
def size( self ):
return len ( self .items)
Operations : Average Case (assumes parameters are randomly generated)
Append : O(1)
Appendleft : O(1)
Copy : O(n)
Extend : O(k)
Extendleft : O(k)
Pop : O(1)
Popleft : O(1)
Remove : O(n) Rotate : O(k)

Section 195.2: Algorithmic Notations

There are certain principles that apply to optimization in any computer

language, and Python is no exception. Don't optimize as you go: Write
your program without regard to possible optimizations, concentrating
instead on making sure that the code is clean, correct, and
understandable. If it's too big or too slow when you've finished, then you
can consider optimizing it.

: In many fields you can get 80% of the result with 20% of the effort
(also called the Remember the 80/20 rule
90/10 rule - it depends on who you talk to). Whenever you're about to
optimize code, use profiling to find out where that 80% of execution time
is going, so you know where to concentrate your effort.

Always run "before" and "after" benchmarks : How else will you know
that your optimizations actually made a difference? If your optimized
code turns out to be only slightly faster or smaller than the original
version, undo your changes and go back to the original, clear code.

Use the right algorithms and data structures: Don't use an O(n2) bubble
sort algorithm to sort a thousand elements when there's an O(n log n)
quicksort available. Similarly, don't store a thousand items in an array
that requires an O(n) search when you could use an O(log n) binary tree,
or an O(1) Python hash table.

For more visit the link below... Python Speed Up

The following 3 asymptotic notations are mostly used to represent time
complexity of algorithms.

1. Θ Notation: The theta notation bounds a functions from above and

below, so it defines exact asymptotic behavior. A simple way to get Theta
notation of an expression is to drop low order terms and ignore leading
constants. For example, consider the following expression. 3n3 + 6n2 +
6000 = Θ(n3) Dropping lower order terms is always fine because there
will always be a n0 after which Θ(n3) has higher values than Θn2)
irrespective of the constants involved. For a given function g(n), we
denote Θ(g(n)) is following set of functions. Θ(g(n)) = {f(n): there exist
positive constants c1, c2 and n0 such that 0 <= c1g(n) <= f(n) <= c2 g(n)
for all n >= n0} The above definition means, if f(n) is theta of g(n), then
the value f(n) is always between c1g(n) and c2 g(n) for large values of n
(n >= n0). The definition of theta also requires that f(n) must be non-
negative for values of n greater than n0.

2. Big O Notation: The Big O notation defines an upper bound of an

algorithm, it bounds a function only from above. For example, consider
the case of Insertion Sort. It takes linear time in best case and quadratic
time in worst case. We can safely say that the time complexity of
Insertion sort is O(n^2). Note that O(n^2) also covers linear time. If we
use Θ notation to represent time complexity of Insertion sort, we have to
use two statements for best and worst cases:

1. The worst case time complexity of Insertion Sort is Θ(n^2). 2. The best
case time complexity of Insertion Sort is Θ(n).
The Big O notation is useful when we only have upper bound on time
complexity of an algorithm. Many times we easily find an upper bound
by simply looking at the algorithm. O(g(n)) = { f(n): there exist positive
constants c and n0 such that 0 <= f(n) <= cg(n) for all n >= n0}

0. Ω Notation: Just as Big O notation provides an asymptotic upper

bound on a function, Ω notation provides an asymptotic lower bound. Ω
Notation< can be useful when we have lower bound on time complexity
of an algorithm. As discussed in the previous post, the best case
performance of an algorithm is generally not useful, the Omega notation
is the least used notation among all three. For a given function g(n), we
denote by Ω(g(n)) the set of functions. Ω (g(n)) = {f(n): there exist
positive constants c and n0 such that 0 <= cg(n) <= f(n) for all n >= n0}.
Let us consider the same Insertion sort example here. The time
complexity of Insertion Sort can be written as Ω(n), but it is not a very
useful information about insertion sort, as we are generally interested in
worst case and sometimes in average case.

Section 195.3: Notation

Basic Idea
The notation used when describing the speed of your Python program is
called Big-O notation. Let's say you have a function:
def list_check(to_check , the_list): for item in the_list:
if to_check == item:
return True
return False
This is a simple function to check if an item is in a list. To describe the
complexity of this function, you will say O(n). This means "Order of n"
as the O function is known as the Order function.
O(n) - generally n is the number of items in container O(k) - generally k
is the value of the parameter or the number of elements in the parameter

Section 195.4: List operations

Operations : Average Case (assumes parameters are randomly generated)
Append : O(1)
Copy : O(n)
Del slice : O(n)
Delete item : O(n)
Insert : O(n)
Get item : O(1)
Set item : O(1)
Iteration : O(n)
Get slice : O(k)
Set slice : O(n + k)
Extend : O(k)
Sort : O(n log n)
Multiply : O(nk)
x in s : O(n)
min(s), max(s) :O(n)
Get length : O(1)

Section 195.5: Set operations

Operation : Average Case (assumes parameters generated randomly) :
Worst case
x in s : O(1)
Difference s - t : O(len(s))
Intersection s&t : O(min(len(s), len(t))) : O(len(s) * len(t)
Multiple intersection s1&s2&s3&...&sn : : (n-1) * O(l) where l is
max(len(s1),...,len(sn))
s.difference_update(t) : O(len(t)) : O(len(t) * len(s))
s.symetric_difference_update(t) : O(len(t))
Symetric difference s^t : O(len(s)) : O(len(s) * len(t)) Union s|t : O(len(s)
+ len(t))

Chapter 196: Performance optimization

Section 196.1: Code profiling

First and foremost you should be able to find the bottleneck of your
script and note that no optimization can compensate for a poor choice in
data structure or a flaw in your algorithm design. Secondly do not try to
optimize too early in your coding process at the expense of
readability/design/quality. Donald Knuth made the following statement
on optimization:

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up
our opportunities in that critical 3%"
To profile your code you have several tools: cProfile (or the slower profile
) from the standard library, line_profiler and timeit . Each of them serve a
different purpose.

cProfile is a deterministic profiler: function call, function return, and

exception events are monitored, and precise timings are made for the
intervals between these events (up to 0.001s). The library documentation
([https://docs.python.org/2/library/profile.html][1]) provides us with a
simple use case

import cProfile
def f(x):
return "42!"
cProfile.run( 'f(12)' )
Or if you prefer to wrap parts of your existing code:

import cProfile, pstats , StringIO

pr = cProfile.Profile()
pr.enable()
# ... do something ...
# ... long ...
pr.disable()
sortby = 'cumulative'
ps = pstats .Stats(pr, stream= s).sort_stats(sortby) ps.print_stats()
print s.getvalue()

This will create outputs looking like the table below, where you can
quickly see where your program spends most of its time and identify the
functions to optimize.
3 function calls in 0.000 seconds
Ordered by: standard name
ncalls tottime percall cumtime percall filename:lineno(function) 1 0.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 :1(f)
1 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 :1()
1 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 {method 'disable' of '_lsprof.Profiler' objects}

The module line_profiler ([https://github.com/rkern/line_profiler][1]) is

useful to have a line by line analysis of your code. This is obviously not
manageable for long scripts but is aimed at snippets. See the
documentation for more details. The easiest way to get started is to use
the kernprof script as explained one the package page, note that you will
need to specify manually the function(s) to profile.

$ kernprof -l script_to_profile.py

kernprof will create an instance of LineProfiler and insert it into the

__builtins__ namespace with the name profile. It has been written to be
used as a decorator, so in your script, you decorate the functions you
want to profile with @ profile .

@ profile
def slow_function(a , b , c): ...

The default behavior of kernprof is to put the results into a binary file
script_to_profile.py.lprof . You can tell kernprof to immediately view the
formatted results at the terminal with the [-v/--view] option. Otherwise,
you can view the results later like so:

$ python -m line_profiler script_to_profile.py.lprof

Finally timeit provides a simple way to test one liners or small expression
both from the command line and the python shell. This module will
answer question such as, is it faster to do a list comprehension or use the
built-in list () when transforming a set into a list. Look for the setup
keyword or -s option to add setup code.

>>> import timeit

>>> timeit .timeit ('"-".join(str(n) for n in range(100))' , number= 10000 )
0.8187260627746582

from a terminal
$ python -m timeit '"-".join(str(n) for n in range(100))' 10000 loops , best of
: 40.3 usec per loop

Chapter 197: Security and Cryptography

Python, being one of the most popular languages in computer and
network security, has great potential in security and cryptography. This
topic deals with the cryptographic features and implementations in
Python from its uses in computer and network security to hashing and
encryption/decryption algorithms.

Section 197.1: Secure Password Hashing

The PBKDF2 algorithm exposed by hashlib module can be used to

perform secure password hashing. While this algorithm cannot prevent
brute-force attacks in order to recover the original password from the
stored hash, it makes such attacks very expensive.

import hashlib
import os
salt = os .urandom( 16 )
hash = hashlib.pbkdf2_hmac( 'sha256' , b 'password' , salt , 100000 )

PBKDF2 can work with any digest algorithm, the above example uses
SHA256 which is usually recommended. The random salt should be
stored along with the hashed password, you will need it again in order to
compare an entered password to the stored hash. It is essential that each
password is hashed with a different salt. As to the number of rounds, it is
recommended to set it as high as possible for your application .

If you want the result in hexadecimal, you can use the binascii module:
import binascii
hexhash = binascii .hexlify( hash )
Note : While PBKDF2 isn't bad, bcrypt and especially scrypt are considered
stronger against brute-force attacks. Neither is part of the Python
standard library at the moment.

Section 197.2: Calculating a Message Digest

The hashlib module allows creating message digest generators via the
new method. These generators will turn an arbitrary string into a fixed-
length digest:
import hashlib

h = hashlib.new ('sha256' )
h.update(b'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.' )
h.digest()
# ==>
b'.\xdf\xda\xdaVR[\x12\x90\xff\x16\xfb\x17D\xcf\xb4\x82\xdd)\x14\xff\xbc\xb6Iy\x0c\x
='

Note that you can call update an arbitrary number of times before
calling digest which is useful to hash a large file chunk by chunk. You
can also get the digest in hexadecimal format by using hexdigest:
h.hexdigest()
# ==>
'2edfdada56525b1290ff16fb1744cfb482dd2914ffbcb649790c0e589e462d3d'

Section 197.3: Available Hashing Algorithms

hashlib. new requires the name of an algorithm when you call it to

produce a generator. To find out what algorithms are available in the
current Python interpreter, use hashlib.algorithms_available:

import hashlib
hashlib.algorithms_available
# ==> {'sha256', 'DSA-SHA', 'SHA512', 'SHA224', 'dsaWithSHA', 'SHA',
'RIPEMD160', 'ecdsa-with-SHA1', 'sha1', 'SHA384', 'md5', 'SHA1',
'MD5', 'MD4', 'SHA256', 'sha384', 'md4', 'ripemd160', 'sha224', 'sha512',
'DSA', 'dsaEncryption', 'sha', 'whirlpool'}
The returned list will vary according to platform and interpreter; make
sure you check your algorithm is available.
There are also some algorithms that are guaranteed to be available on all
platforms and interpreters, which are available using
hashlib.algorithms_guaranteed:
hashlib.algorithms_guaranteed
# ==> {'sha256', 'sha384', 'sha1', 'sha224', 'md5', 'sha512'}

Section 197.4: File Hashing

A hash is a function that converts a variable length sequence of bytes to a

fixed length sequence. Hashing files can be advantageous for many
reasons. Hashes can be used to check if two files are identical or verify
that the contents of a file haven't been corrupted or changed.

You can use hashlib to generate a hash for a file:

import hashlib

hasher = hashlib.new ('sha256' )

with open ('myfile' , 'r' ) as f:
contents = f.read()
hasher.update(contents)

print hasher.hexdigest()
For larger files, a buffer of fixed length can be used:

import hashlib
SIZE = 65536
hasher = hashlib.new ('sha256' ) with open ('myfile' , 'r' ) as f:

buffer = f.read(SIZE) while len (buffer) > 0 : hasher.update(buffer)

buffer = f.read(SIZE) print (hasher.hexdigest())

Section 197.5: Generating RSA signatures using pycrypto

RSA can be used to create a message signature. A valid signature can

only be generated with access to the private RSA key, validating on the
other hand is possible with merely the corresponding public key. So as
long as the other side knows your public key they can verify the message
to be signed by you and unchanged - an approach used for email for
example. Currently, a third-party module like pycrypto is required for
this functionality.

import errno

from Crypto.Hash import SHA256

from Crypto.PublicKey import RSA from Crypto.Signature import
PKCS1_v1_5 message = b'This message is from me, I promise.'

try : with open ( 'privkey.pem' , 'r' ) as f:

key = RSA.importKey(f.read())
except IOError as e:
if e. errno != errno .ENOENT:
raise

# No private key, generate a new one. This can take a few seconds. key =
RSA.generate(4096 )
with open ('privkey.pem' , 'wb' ) as f:

f.write(key.exportKey( 'PEM' ))
with open ('pubkey.pem' , 'wb' ) as f:
f.write(key.publickey().exportKey('PEM' ))

hasher = SHA256.new (message) signer = PKCS1_v1_5.new (key)

signature = signer.sign(hasher)

Verifying the signature works similarly but uses the public key rather
than the private key:

with open ('pubkey.pem' , 'rb' ) as f:

key = RSA.importKey(f.read())
hasher = SHA256.new (message)
verifier = PKCS1_v1_5.new (key)
if verifier.verify(hasher, signature):
print ('Nice, the signature is valid!' )
else :
print ('No, the message was signed with the wrong private key or
modified' )

Note : The above examples use PKCS#1 v1.5 signing algorithm which is
very common. pycrypto also implements the newer PKCS#1 PSS
algorithm, replacing PKCS1_v1_5 by PKCS1_PSS in the examples
should work if you want to use that one. Currently there seems to be
little reason to use it however.

Section 197.6: Asymmetric RSA encryption using pycrypto

Asymmetric encryption has the advantage that a message can be

encrypted without exchanging a secret key with the recipient of the
message. The sender merely needs to know the recipients public key, this
allows encrypting the message in such a way that only the designated
recipient (who has the corresponding private key) can decrypt it.
Currently, a third-party module like pycrypto is required for this
functionality.

from Crypto.Cipher import PKCS1_OAEP from Crypto.PublicKey import

RSA
message = b 'This is a very secret message.'

with open ('pubkey.pem' , 'rb' ) as f: key = RSA.importKey(f.read())

cipher = PKCS1_OAEP.new (key)
encrypted = cipher.encrypt(message)

The recipient can decrypt the message then if they have the right private
key:

with open ('privkey.pem' , 'rb' ) as f: key = RSA.importKey(f.read())

cipher = PKCS1_OAEP.new (key)
decrypted = cipher.decrypt(encrypted)

Note : The above examples use PKCS#1 OAEP encryption scheme.

pycrypto also implements PKCS#1 v1.5 encryption scheme, this one is
not recommended for new protocols however due to known caveats .
Section 197.7: Symmetric encryption using pycrypto

Python's built-in crypto functionality is currently limited to hashing.

Encryption requires a third-party module like pycrypto . For example, it
provides the AES algorithm which is considered state of the art for
symmetric encryption. The following code will encrypt a given message
using a passphrase:

import hashlib import math

import os

from Crypto.Cipher import AES

IV_SIZE = 16 # 128 bit, fixed for the AES algorithm

KEY_SIZE = 32 # 256 bit meaning AES-256, can also be 128 or 192 bits
SALT_SIZE = 16 # This size is arbitrary

cleartext = b'Lorem ipsum'

password = b'highly secure encryption password'
salt = os .urandom(SALT_SIZE)
derived = hashlib.pbkdf2_hmac('sha256' , password, salt, 100000 ,

dklen = IV_SIZE + KEY_SIZE) iv = derived[0 :IV_SIZE]

key = derived[IV_SIZE:]

encrypted = salt + AES. new (key , AES.MODE_CFB , iv).encrypt(cleartext)

The AES algorithm takes three parameters: encryption key,

initialization vector (IV) and the actual message to be encrypted. If you
have a randomly generated AES key then you can use that one directly
and merely generate a random initialization vector. A passphrase doesn't
have the right size however, nor would it be recommendable to use it
directly given that it isn't truly random and thus has comparably little
entropy. Instead, we use the built-in implementation of the PBKDF2
algorithm to generate a 128 bit initialization vector and 256 bit
encryption key from the password.

Note the random salt which is important to have a different initialization

vector and key for each message encrypted. This ensures in particular
that two equal messages won't result in identical encrypted text, but it
also prevents attackers from reusing work spent guessing one passphrase
on messages encrypted with another passphrase. This salt has to be
stored along with the encrypted message in order to derive the same
initialization vector and key for decrypting.

The following code will decrypt our message again:

salt = encrypted[ 0 :SALT_SIZE]
derived = hashlib.pbkdf2_hmac( 'sha256' , password , salt , 100000 , dklen
IV_SIZE + KEY_SIZE)

iv = derived[0 :IV_SIZE]
key = derived[IV_SIZE:]
cleartext = AES.new (key, AES.MODE_CFB,
iv).decrypt(encrypted[SALT_SIZE:])

Chapter 198: Secure Shell Connection in Python

Parameter Usage
hostname This parameter tells the host to which the connection needs to
be established username username required to access the host
port host port
password password for the account

Section 198.1: ssh connection

from paramiko import client

ssh = client.SSHClient() # create a new SSHClient object
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy()) #auto-
accept unknown host keys ssh.connect(hostname, username= username,
port= port, password= password) #connect with a host stdin, stdout,
stderr = ssh.exec_command(command) # submit a command to ssh print
stdout.channel.recv_exit_status() #tells the status 1 - job failed

Chapter 199: Python Anti-Patterns

Section 199.1: Overzealous except clause

Exceptions are powerful, but a single overzealous except clause can take
it all away in a single line.
try: res = get_result() res = res[0] log('got result: %r' % res) except: if
not res: res = '' print('got exception')
This example demonstrates 3 symptoms of the antipattern:

1. The except with no exception type (line 5) will catch even healthy
exceptions, including KeyboardInterrupt . That will prevent the
program from exiting in some cases.
2. The except block does not reraise the error, meaning that we won't be
able to tell if the exception came from within get_result or because res
was an empty list.
3. Worst of all, if we were worried about result being empty, we've
caused something much worse. If get_result fails, res will stay completely
unset, and the reference to res in the except block, will raise NameError ,
completely masking the original error.

Always think about the type of exception you're trying to handle. Give
the exceptions page a read and get a feel for what basic exceptions exist.
Here is a fixed version of the example above:
import traceback try: res = get_result() except Exception:
log_exception(traceback.format_exc()) raise try: res = res[0] except
IndexError: res = '' log('got result: %r' % res)
We catch more specific exceptions, reraising where necessary. A few
more lines, but infinitely more correct.

Section 199.2: Looking before you leap with processorintensive

function

A program can easily waste time by calling a processor-intensive

function multiple times.
For example, take a function which looks like this: it returns an integer if
the input value can produce one, else None :

def intensive_f(value): # int -> Optional[int]

# complex, and time-consuming code
if process_has_failed:

return None
return integer_output
And it could be used in the following way:
x=5
if intensive_f(x) is not None :
print (intensive_f(x) / 2 )
else :
print (x , "could not be processed" )
print (x)
Whilst this will work, it has the problem of calling intensive_f, which
doubles the length of time for the code to run. A better solution would be
to get the return value of the function beforehand.

x=5
result = intensive_f(x)
if result is not None :

print (result / 2 )
else :
print (x, "could not be processed" )

However, a clearer and possibly more pythonic way is to use exceptions,

for example:
x = 5 try :
print (intensive_f(x) / 2 )
except TypeError : # The exception raised if None + 1 is attempted print (x
"could not be processed" )
Here no temporary variable is needed. It may often be preferable to use
a assert statement, and to catch the AssertionError instead.
Dictionary keys
A common example of where this may be found is accessing dictionary
keys. For example compare:
bird_speeds = get_very_long_dictionary()

if "european swallow" in bird_speeds:

speed = bird_speeds["european swallow" ]
else :
speed = input ("What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" )

print (speed)
with:
bird_speeds = get_very_long_dictionary()

try : speed = bird_speeds["european swallow" ]

except KeyError :
speed = input ("What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" )

print (speed)

The first example has to look through the dictionary twice, and as this is
a long dictionary, it may take a long time to do so each time. The second
only requires one search through the dictionary, and thus saves a lot of
processor time.

An alternative to this is to use dict .get(key , default), however many

circumstances may require more complex operations to be done in the case
that the key is not present

Chapter 200: Common Pitfalls

Python is a language meant to be clear and readable without any
ambiguities and unexpected behaviors. Unfortunately, these goals are
not achievable in all cases, and that is why Python does have a few
corner cases where it might do something different than what you were
expecting.

This section will show you some issues that you might encounter when
writing Python code.

Section 200.1: List multiplication and common references

Consider the case of creating a nested list structure by multiplying:
li = [[]] * 3
print (li)
# Out: [[], [], []]

At first glance we would think we have a list of containing 3 different

nested lists. Let's try to append 1 to the first one:

li[ 0 ].append(1 )
print (li)
# Out: [[1], [1], [1]]

1 got appended to all of the lists in li.

The reason is that [[]] * 3 doesn't create a list of 3 different list s. Rather,
it creates a list holding 3 references to the same list object. As such, when
we append to li[0 ] the change is visible in all sub-elements of li. This is
equivalent of:

li = []
element = [[]]
li = element + element + element
print (li)
# Out: [[], [], []]
element.append(1 )
print (li)
# Out: [[1], [1], [1]]

This can be further corroborated if we print the memory addresses of

the contained list by using id:

li = [[]] * 3
print ([id (inner_list) for inner_list in li]) # Out: [6830760, 6830760,
6830760]

The solution is to create the inner lists with a loop:

li = [[] for _ in range ( 3 )]
Instead of creating a single list and then making 3 references to it, we now
create 3 different distinct lists. This, again, can be verified by using the id
function:
print ([ id (inner_list) for inner_list in li]) # Out: [6331048, 6331528, 6331488]
You can also do this. It causes a new empty list to be created in each
append call.

>>> li = []
>>> li.append([])
>>> li.append([])
>>> li.append([])
>>> for k in li: print (id (k)) ...
4315469256
4315564552
4315564808

Don't use index to loop over a sequence.

Don't:
for i in range ( len (tab)): print (tab[i])
Do:
for elem in tab: print (elem)
for will automate most iteration operations for you.
Use enumerate if you really need both the index and the element.
for i , elem in enumerate (tab): print ((i , elem))
Be careful when using "==" to check against True or False
if (var == True ):
# this will execute if var is True or 1, 1.0, 1L
if (var != True ):
# this will execute if var is neither True nor 1
if (var == False ):
# this will execute if var is False or 0 (or 0.0, 0L, 0j)
if (var == None ):
# only execute if var is None
if var:
# execute if var is a non-empty string/list/dictionary/tuple, non-0, etc
if not var:
# execute if var is "", {}, [], (), 0, None, etc.
if var is True :
# only execute if var is boolean True, not 1
if var is False :
# only execute if var is boolean False, not 0
if var is None :
# same as var == None
Do not check if you can, just do it and handle the error
Pythonistas usually say "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than
permission".
Don't:

if os .path.isfile(file_path): file = open (file_path)

else :
# do something

Do:

try : file = open (file_path)

except OSError as e:
# do something

Or even better with Python 2.6 +:

with open (file_path) as file :
It is much better because it is much more generic. You can apply try /
except to almost anything. You don't need to care about what to do to
prevent it, just care about the error you are risking.
Do not check against type

Python is dynamically typed, therefore checking for type makes you lose
flexibility. Instead, use duck typing by checking behavior. If you expect a
string in a function, then use str () to convert any object to a string. If
you expect a list, use list () to convert any iterable to a list.

Don't:
def foo(name):
if isinstance (name , str ): print (name.lower())

def bar(listing):
if isinstance (listing, list ): listing.extend((1 , 2 , 3 )) return ", " .join(listing)
Do:
def foo(name) :
print ( str (name).lower())

def bar(listing) :
l = list (listing) l.extend((1 , 2 , 3 )) return ", " .join(l)

Using the last way, foo will accept any object. bar will accept strings,
tuples, sets, lists and much more. Cheap DRY.
Don't mix spaces and tabs Use object as first parent

This is tricky, but it will bite you as your program grows. There are old
and new classes in Python 2 .x. The old ones are, well, old. They lack
some features, and can have awkward behavior with inheritance. To be
usable, any of your class must be of the "new style". To do so, make it
inherit from object .

Don't:
class Father: pass
class Child(Father): pass
Do:
class Father( object ): pass
class Child(Father): pass
In Python 3 .x all classes are new style so you don't need to do that.
Don't initialize class attributes outside the init method

People coming from other languages find it tempting because that is

what you do in Java or PHP. You write the class name, then list your
attributes and give them a default value. It seems to work in Python,
however, this doesn't work the way you think. Doing that will setup class
attributes (static attributes), then when you will try to get the object
attribute, it will gives you its value unless it's empty. In that case it will
return the class attributes. It implies two big hazards:

If the class attribute is changed, then the initial value is changed.

If you set a mutable object as a default value, you'll get the same object
shared across instances.
Don't (unless you want static):
class Car(object ):
color = "red"
wheels = [Wheel(), Wheel(), Wheel(), Wheel()]

Do:

class Car(object ):
def __init__ (self ):
self .color = "red"
self .wheels = [Wheel(), Wheel(), Wheel(), Wheel()]

Section 200.2: Mutable default argument

def foo(li= []):

li.append(1 )
print (li)
foo([2 ])
# Out: [2, 1] foo([3 ])
# Out: [3, 1]

This code behaves as expected, but what if we don't pass an argument?

foo()
# Out: [1] As expected...
foo()
# Out: [1, 1] Not as expected...
This is because default arguments of functions and methods are
evaluated at definition time rather than run time. So we only ever have a
single instance of the li list.
The way to get around it is to use only immutable types for default
arguments:
def foo(li = None ): if not li: li = [] li.append( 1 ) print (li)
foo()
# Out: [1]
foo()
# Out: [1]
While an improvement and although if not li correctly evaluates to False ,
many other objects do as well, such as zero-length sequences. The
following example arguments can cause unintended results:

x = []
foo(li= x) # Out: [1]

foo(li = "" ) # Out: [1]

foo(li = 0 ) # Out: [1]
The idiomatic approach is to directly check the argument against the
None object:
def foo(li = None ): if li is None : li = [] li.append( 1 ) print (li)
foo()
# Out: [1]

Section 200.3: Changing the sequence you are iterating over

A for loop iterates over a sequence, so altering this sequence inside the
loop could lead to unexpected results (especially when adding or
removing elements):
alist = [ 0 , 1 , 2 ]
for index , value in enumerate (alist): alist.pop(index)
print (alist)
# Out: [1]
Note: list .pop() is being used to remove elements from the list.
The second element was not deleted because the iteration goes through
the indices in order. The above loop iterates twice, with the following
results:

# Iteration #1
index = 0
alist = [0 , 1 , 2 ]
alist.pop(0 ) # removes '0'

# Iteration #2
index = 1
alist = [1 , 2 ]
alist.pop(1 ) # removes '2'

# loop terminates, but alist is not empty: alist = [ 1 ]

This problem arises because the indices are changing while iterating in
the direction of increasing index. To avoid this problem, you can iterate
through the loop backwards:

alist = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]
for index, item in reversed (list (enumerate (alist))): # delete all even items
if item % 2 == 0 :
alist.pop(index)
print (alist)
# Out: [1, 3, 5, 7]

By iterating through the loop starting at the end, as items are removed
(or added), it does not affect the indices of items earlier in the list. So this
example will properly remove all items that are even from alist.
A similar problem arises when inserting or appending elements to a list
that you are iterating over, which can result in an infinite loop:

alist = [0 , 1 , 2 ]
for index, value in enumerate (alist):
# break to avoid infinite loop:
if index == 20 :
break
alist.insert(index, 'a' )
print (alist)
# Out (abbreviated): ['a', 'a', ..., 'a', 'a', 0, 1, 2]

Without the break condition the loop would insert 'a' as long as the
computer does not run out of memory and the program is allowed to
continue. In a situation like this, it is usually preferred to create a new
list, and add items to the new list as you loop through the original list.

When using a for loop, you cannot modify the list elements with the
placeholder variable:
alist = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] for item in alist: if item % 2 == 0 :

item = 'even' print (alist)

# Out: [1,2,3,4]
In the above example, changing item doesn't actually change anything in
the original list. You need to use the list index (alist[ 2 ]), and enumerate ()
works well for this:
alist = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]
for index , item in enumerate (alist): if item % 2 == 0 :

alist[index] = 'even' print (alist)

# Out: [1, 'even', 3, 'even']

A while loop might be a better choice in some cases:

If you are going to delete all the items in the list:

zlist = [0 , 1 , 2 ]
while zlist:
print (zlist[0 ])
zlist.pop(0 )
print ('After: zlist =' , zlist)

# Out: 0
#1
#2
# After: zlist = []

Although simply resetting zlist will accomplish the same result;

zlist = []
The above example can also be combined with len () to stop after a certain
point, or to delete all but x items in the list:

zlist = [0 , 1 , 2 ]
x=1
while len (zlist) > x:

print (zlist[ 0 ])
zlist.pop( 0 )
print ( 'After: zlist =' , zlist)

# Out: 0
#1
# After: zlist = [2]

Or to loop through a list while deleting elements that meet a certain

condition (in this case deleting all even elements):

zlist = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
i=0
while i < len (zlist):

if zlist[i] % 2 == 0 : zlist.pop(i)
else :
i += 1 print (zlist)
# Out: [1, 3, 5]

Notice that you don't increment i after deleting an element. By deleting

the element at zlist[i], the index of the next item has decreased by one, so
by checking zlist[i] with the same value for i on the next iteration, you
will be correctly checking the next item in the list.

A contrary way to think about removing unwanted items from a list, is to

add wanted items to a new list. The following example is an alternative to
the latter while loop example:
zlist = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
z_temp = []
for item in zlist:
if item % 2 != 0 :

z_temp.append(item) zlist = z_temp

print (zlist)
# Out: [1, 3, 5]

Here we are funneling desired results into a new list. We can then
optionally reassign the temporary list to the original variable.

With this trend of thinking, you can invoke one of Python's most elegant
and powerful features, list comprehensions, which eliminates temporary
lists and diverges from the previously discussed in-place list/index
mutation ideology.
zlist = [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]
[item for item in zlist if item % 2 != 0 ] # Out: [1, 3, 5]

Section 200.4: Integer and String identity

Python uses internal caching for a range of integers to reduce
unnecessary overhead from their repeated creation.
In effect, this can lead to confusing behavior when comparing integer
identities:

>>> 8 is (7 - 1 )
False
>>> 3 is (2 - 1 )
True

and, using another example:

>>> (255 + 1 ) is (255 + 1 ) True

>>> (256 + 1 ) is (256 + 1 ) False

Wait what?
We can see that the identity operation is yields True for some integers (-3,
256 ) but no for others (-8, 257 ).
To be more specific, integers in the range [ 5 , 256 ] are internally cached
during interpreter startup and are only created once. As such, they are
identical and comparing their identities with is yields True ; integers
outside this range are (usually) created on-the-fly and their identities
compare to False . This is a common pitfall since this is a common range
for testing, but often enough, the code fails in the later staging process
(or worse - production) with no apparent reason after working perfectly
in development.
The solution is to always compare values using the equality (==) operator
and not the identity (is) operator.
Python also keeps references to commonly used strings and can result in
similarly confusing behavior when comparing identities (i.e. using is) of
strings.
>>> 'python' is 'py' + 'thon' True
The string 'python' is commonly used, so Python has one object that all
references to the string 'python' use.
For uncommon strings, comparing identity fails even when the strings
are equal.

>>> 'this is not a common string' is 'this is not' + ' a common string' False
>>> 'this is not a common string' == 'this is not' + ' a common string' True

So, just like the rule for Integers, always compare string values using the
equality (==) operator and not the identity (is) operator.

Section 200.5: Dictionaries are unordered

You might expect a Python dictionary to be sorted by keys like, for
example, a C++ std:: map , but this is not the case:

myDict = {'first' : 1 , 'second' : 2 , 'third' : 3 }

print (myDict)
# Out: {'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3}

print ([k for k in myDict])

# Out: ['second', 'third', 'first']
Python doesn't have any built-in class that automatically sorts its
elements by key.
However, if sorting is not a must, and you just want your dictionary to
remember the order of insertion of its key/value pairs, you can use
collections .OrderedDict:
from collections import OrderedDict
oDict = OrderedDict([( 'first' , 1 ) , ( 'second' , 2 ) , ( 'third' , 3 )])
print ([k for k in oDict])
# Out: ['first', 'second', 'third']
Keep in mind that initializing an OrderedDict with a standard dictionary
won't sort in any way the dictionary for you. All that this structure does
is to preserve the order of key insertion.
The implementation of dictionaries was changed in Python 3.6 to improve
their memory consumption. A side effect of this new implementation is
that it also preserves the order of keyword arguments passed to a
function:
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.6
def func(**kw): print (kw.keys())
func(a = 1 , b = 2 , c = 3 , d = 4 , e = 5 )
dict_keys([ 'a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' ]) # expected order
Caveat: beware that “ the order-preserving aspect of this new
implementation is considered an implementation detail and should not be
relied upon ” , as it may change in the future.

Section 200.6: Variable leaking in list comprehensions and for

loops
Consider the following list comprehension

Python 2.x Version ≤ 2.7

i=0

a = [i for i in range ( 3 )]
print (i) # Outputs 2
This occurs only in Python 2 due to the fact that the list comprehension
“leaks” the loop control variable into the surrounding scope ( source ).
This behavior can lead to hard-to-find bugs and it has been fixed in
Python 3 .
Python 3.x Version ≥ 3.0

i=0
a = [i for i in range (3 )] print (i) # Outputs 0

Similarly, for loops have no private scope for their iteration variable
i=0
for i in range ( 3 ): pass
print (i) # Outputs 2
This type of behavior occurs both in Python 2 and Python 3. To avoid
issues with leaking variables, use new variables in list comprehensions
and for loops as appropriate.

Section 200.7: Chaining of or operator

When testing for any of several equality comparisons:
if a == 3 or b == 3 or c == 3 :
it is tempting to abbreviate this to
if a or b or c == 3 : # Wrong
This is wrong; the or operator has lower precedence than ==, so the
expression will be evaluated as if (a) or (b) or (c == 3 ):. The correct way is
explicitly checking all the conditions:
if a == 3 or b == 3 or c == 3 : # Right Way
Alternately, the built-in any () function may be used in place of chained or
operators:
if any ([a == 3 , b == 3 , c == 3 ]): # Right
Or, to make it more efficient:
if any (x == 3 for x in (a , b , c)): # Right
Or, to make it shorter:
if 3 in (a , b , c): # Right
Here, we use the in operator to test if the value is present in a tuple
containing the values we want to compare against.
Similarly, it is incorrect to write
if a == 1 or 2 or 3 :
which should be written as if a in ( 1 , 2 , 3 ):

Section 200.8: sys.argv[0] is the name of the file being executed

The first element of sys .argv[ 0 ] is the name of the python file being
executed. The remaining elements are the script arguments.
# script.py import sys
print ( sys .argv[ 0 ]) print ( sys .argv)

$ python script.py => script.py

=> ['script.py' ]

$ python script.py fizz => script.py

=> ['script.py' , 'fizz' ]

$ python script.py fizz buzz => script.py

=> ['script.py' , 'fizz' , 'buzz' ]
Section 200.9: Accessing int literals' attributes

You might have heard that everything in Python is an object, even

literals. This means, for example, 7 is an object as well, which means it
has attributes. For example, one of these attributes is the bit_length. It
returns the amount of bits needed to represent the value it is called upon.

x=7
x.bit_length() # Out: 3

Seeing the above code works, you might intuitively think that 7
.bit_length() would work as well, only to find out it raises a SyntaxError
. Why? because the interpreter needs to differentiate between an
attribute access and a floating number (for example 7.2 or 7
.bit_length()). It can't, and that's why an exception is raised.

There are a few ways to access an int literals' attributes:

# parenthesis (7 ).bit_length() # a space

7 .bit_length()

Using two dots (like this 7 ..bit_length()) doesn't work in this case, because
that creates a float literal and floats don't have the bit_length() method.
This problem doesn't exist when accessing float literals' attributes since
the interpreter is "smart" enough to know that a float literal can't contain
two ., for example:
7.2 .as_integer_ratio()
# Out: (8106479329266893, 1125899906842624)

Section 200.10: Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) and blocking

threads
Plenty has been written about Python's GIL . It can sometimes cause
confusion when dealing with multi-threaded (not to be confused with
multiprocess) applications.
Here's an example:
import math
from threading import Thread
def calc_fact(num):
math .factorial(num)

num = 600000
t = Thread(target= calc_fact, daemon= True , args= [num])
print ("About to calculate: {}!" .format(num))
t.start()
print ("Calculating..." )
t.join()
print ("Calculated" )

You would expect to see Calculating... printed out immediately after the
thread is started, we wanted the calculation to happen in a new thread
after all! But in actuality, you see it get printed after the calculation is
complete. That is because the new thread relies on a C function (math
.factorial) which will lock the GIL while it executes.

There are a couple ways around this. The first is to implement your
factorial function in native Python. This will allow the main thread to
grab control while you are inside your loop. The downside is that this
solution will be a lot slower, since we're not using the C function
anymore.

def calc_fact(num):
""" A slow version of factorial in native Python """ res = 1
while num >= 1 :

res = res * num

num = 1 return res

You can also sleep for a period of time before starting your execution.
Note: this won't actually allow your program to interrupt the
computation happening inside the C function, but it will allow your main
thread to continue after the spawn, which is what you may expect.

def calc_fact(num): sleep(0.001 )

math .factorial(num)
Section 200.11: Multiple return

Function xyz returns two values a and b:

def xyz():
return a , b
Code calling xyz stores result into one variable assuming xyz returns
only one value:
t = xyz()
Value of t is actually a tuple (a, b) so any action on t assuming it is not a
tuple may fail deep in the code with a an unexpected error about tuples.
TypeError: type tuple doesn't define ... method
The fix would be to do:
a , b = xyz() Beginners will have trouble finding the reason of this message
by only reading the tuple error message !

Section 200.12: Pythonic JSON keys

my_var = 'bla' ;
api_key = 'key' ;
...lots of code here...
params = {"language" : "en" , my_var: api_key}

If you are used to JavaScript, variable evaluation in Python dictionaries

won't be what you expect it to be. This statement in JavaScript would
result in the params object as follows:

{ "language" : "en" , "my_var" : "key"

}
In Python, however, it would result in the following dictionary:

{ "language" : "en" , "bla" : "key"

} my_var is evaluated and its value is used as the key.

Chapter 201: Hidden Features

Section 201.1: Operator Overloading

Everything in Python is an object. Each object has some special internal

methods which it uses to interact with other objects. Generally, these
methods follow the __action__ naming convention. Collectively, this is
termed as the Python Data Model .

You can overload any of these methods. This is commonly used in

operator overloading in Python. Below is an example of operator
overloading using Python's data model. The Vector class creates a simple
vector of two variables. We'll add appropriate support for mathematical
operations of two vectors using operator overloading.

class Vector(object ):
def __init__ (self , x, y):
self .x = x
self .y = y

def __add__ (self , v):

# Addition with another vector.
return Vector(self .x + v.x, self .y + v.y)

def __sub__ (self , v):

# Subtraction with another vector.
return Vector(self .x - v.x, self .y - v.y)

def __mul__ (self , s):

# Multiplication with a scalar.
return Vector(self .x * s, self .y * s)

def __div__ (self , s):

# Division with a scalar.
float_s = float (s)
return Vector(self .x / float_s, self .y / float_s)

def __floordiv__(self , s):

# Division with a scalar (value floored).
return Vector(self .x // s, self .y // s)
def __repr__ (self ):
# Print friendly representation of Vector class. Else, it would
# show up like, <__main__.Vector instance at 0x01DDDDC8>.
return '<Vector (%f, %f)>' % (self .x, self .y, )

a = Vector( 3 , 5 )
b = Vector( 2 , 7 )

print a + b # Output: <Vector (5.000000, 12.000000)>

print b - a # Output: <Vector (-1.000000, 2.000000)>
print b * 1.3 # Output: <Vector (2.600000, 9.100000)>
print a // 17 # Output: <Vector (0.000000, 0.000000)>
print a / 17 # Output: <Vector (0.176471, 0.294118)>

The above example demonstrates overloading of basic numeric

operators. A comprehensive list can be found here .